The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) (33 page)
Read The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) Online
Authors: Tony Daniel
Tags: #Fables, #Legends, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Norse, #Fantasy & Magic, #General, #Myths
Chapter Forty-Two:
The Battle
The front line was made up of about a hundred mounted troops. Behind them came the foot soldiers.
The horsemen lowered their swords, pikes, and halberds.
When the leading horses crashed into the tents, it was not at great speed. But the jolt of the horses clustered together was massive.
The river distraction seemed to have worked. The Sandhaveners were mostly facing
away
from the charging horses and were overrun from behind. Many were frantically trying to get into armor to join the charge northwest toward the river.
Several of the horsemen had moved ahead of Wulf. They rode down men who did not realize what hit them.
Wulf headed for a group of Sandhaveners standing in front of a tent. But then a big horse cut in front of him and slowed him down. He tried to ride around it to the left, but another moved to block his way. It was two of the bear-man guards. Wulf wheeled around. There were five of them. He was surrounded.
“Blood and bones, get out of the way!” he shouted. But they would not.
When he got to the outskirts of the Sandhaven tents, the enemy had already been cut down or trampled.
They aren’t going to let me fight! Those fools aren’t going to let me fight!
A man crawled out of a nearby tent and charged at them with a sword. One of the bear men neatly shoved Wulf’s horse to the side. Then the bear man met the Sandhavener. The soldier was frantically trying to draw his sword from a scabbard. He never had a chance. The bear man swung his own sword in a brutal arc. It sheared through the side of the man’s neck above his leather armor. Blood and gore spouted out like a geyser.
Wulf felt weak. His head swam and his guts felt loose.
Suddenly in front of Wulf, a man arose from the dust. He’d been trampled and, swaying on injured legs, he pulled himself up. He positioned himself to take a swing at Wulf. The man looked big, even if he was wobbly.
This is it, Wulf thought.
Please, please, let me—
Wulf lowered his sword, raised his buckler, and prepared to go at him. But before he could do it, two bear-man guards charged past him. They stabbed the man from either side with the razor-sharp points of halberds.
They weren’t going to let him fight.
“Nagel, do you see this?” he screamed. The owl squawked her anger back at him. She wanted to be in the fight, too.
“Curse it to cold hell, you
will
let me!” he shouted. It had no effect. There were shouts, screams of rage and pain, the clang of steel, the clatter of blades hitting wooden shields, and the pounding of horse hoofs on the soft ground.
The smell of human feces from the latrine had been replaced. Now the air was filled with the tangy odor of fresh blood.
I was going to do it! I was!
They weren’t going to let him. He felt irritated by it, even though he ought to have known.
He could get away with not pushing himself further. He was in the battle. Nobody would call him a coward now.
Why not leave it at this? He’d shown he was ready and willing. He’d charged with all the others.
He could barely see flashing swords and raised bucklers through the surrounding horses of his guards.
Why not ride back to the woods and get out of this craziness? People were getting their heads split, their arms lopped. Arrows were starting to fall.
He glimpsed a human, a woodsman in green, stagger back toward the woods with a battleax in his back. He collapsed onto the dusty ground near the latrines.
He saw another man walking slowly away, holding onto the wrist of an arm where there used to be a hand.
People were dying in a whirlwind of blades and arrows. It would be all right. He could back up. Watch how the situation developed.
Nobody would blame him.
It made sense, didn’t it?
No. It did not.
Because the dragon would know.
The land would know.
He turned his horse and started back toward the edge of the forest.
“Boy, what are you doing—” squawked Nagel.
“Shut up,” Wulf said.
“Boy, you must try to fight, you must—”
“Shut
up
, I said,” Wulf yelled at Nagel.
Nagel reluctantly did what he asked, but he was afraid she might bite him on the ear out of sheer malice.
Have to convince them I’ve retreated. One or two more eyeblinks, and—
Wulf yanked on the reins and swung his horse around. A less spirited horse would have thrown him at that moment. A less skilled horseman would have fallen off. But his black and white neatly made the turn and Wulf stayed on.
Wulf kicked his mount in the flanks, and the horse seemed to almost heave a sigh of relief. It broke into a trot back toward the battle. Wulf spurred the horse into a full-on gallop. He would only need to keep the gallop going until he could get away from the guards and—
Wulf burst through the ring of startled bear-man guards. He charged back toward the fight. He saw that there was no way he was going to get the horse through the line, though. The foot soldiers were jammed too tightly together. If he wanted to fight, it would have to be on foot.
Hardly missing a beat, Wulf swung himself down from the horse. He squeezed his sword hilt into the scar on his right hand.
Then he ran for the lines. He shoved his way between men, moved forward.
Finally he was facing Sandhaven shields. He’d reached what there was of a front line.
Wulf raised his sword.
Once again, he began to scream.
Chapter Forty-Three:
The Buttress
The Nestie’s tabard with its gray goose on blue and black was a little large for Rainer and blood-soaked in the back. He belted it on anyway. Grer looked like what he was, a common smith with a bag of tools. If they ran into any Sandhaven soldiers, Rainer planned to walk fast and pretend he was carrying out an order.
This was maybe not the best of plans, but it was all Rainer could think of.
I’m wearing their cursed badge now, he thought. I’m officially a spy.
He could be burned, crucified, or beheaded. Maybe he’d get lucky and it would be a clean hanging. Were there rules for executing a spy?
Wulf would know, Rainer thought. He felt loneliness and misery try to settle into his mind. As he had done many times before in the past days, he shoved them away.
“I’ll ask him when I see him,” he muttered.
“Do what?” said Grer. He was walking alongside Rainer as fast as his limp would let him.
“Nothing,” Rainer replied. “We’ve only got a couple of blocks left.”
“I always get lost in town. You’d think I wouldn’t since I’ve lived here all my life.”
“I could find my way through Raukenrose in the moonless dark,” Rainer said.
“And you have,” chuckled Grer.
They were about to get to Allfather Square. Rainer put a hand in front of Grer to hold him back. They both carefully peeped around the wall of the alley.
The square was full of soldiers. Sandhaveners. Several details of five or six men carrying buckets were in line to get water at the fountain.
Across the square, a group of guards stood at attention near the entrance to the cathedral. Rainer counted eight.
“Curse it to cold hell,” Grer said. “How are we going to get past
that
?”
Rainer considered. “We don’t. We circle around and come out on the side of the cathedral.”
“But there’re no doors on the side,” grumbled Grer. “You come in through the front.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rainer said.
Whack, whack, whack.
Metal on wood. A huge splintering, cracking sound drowned out everything else for a moment.
What was that? Then he saw.
A detail of soldiers was cutting down the Olden Oak. They had almost finished. It was already leaning. One side was notched so the tree would fall along the north side of the square, parallel to the cathedral. The upper notch was well into the heartwood.
The tree shuddered. It swayed.
Hundreds of years growing, to die like this.
He wondered if they would cut out Wulf’s dagger. Maybe someone already had.
Curse them.
He and Grer backed into the alley again and worked their way around to the other side of the square. From the side streets Rainer watched the belltower of the cathedral come in and out of view above the roofs of the buildings.
They came out near the east wall of the cathedral. The wall was rimmed at the ground by an evergreen hedge. There were two flying buttresses on this side bracing the main structure. Rainer and Grer were across a cobblestone street from the front spanner.
Rainer examined the buttress, and then the wall. He turned to Grer and smiled.
“They didn’t do it,” he said. “I mean, why would they?”
“Do what?”
“Tuck mortar in the joints,” Rainer replied. “The masons did it on the castle wall. That’s why it’s smooth.”
“All right,” Grer said. “Are we going to try to pull the thing down with our bare hands?”
“It means that I can climb it,” Rainer said.
“Up there?”
“The bell’s not coming down to us.”
Rainer squirmed out of his hauberk. He’d been wearing the mail shirt for days. He instantly felt much lighter. Then he took off the padded arming shirt underneath.
Now he was wearing a fustian shirt and a pair of britches stuffed into his boots.
He thought for a minute. They were heavy, with the hobnails hammered through the soles.
“Switch boots with me,” he said to Grer.
Grer’s feet were bigger than Rainer’s, but the shoes were made of soft leather. Rainer used the straps to pull it tight enough to fit him. The toe was nearly a finger length too long for him, though. After fiddling around a moment, Rainer saw how to fix the problem. He curled the boot toe over itself so it fit under the front bootstrap. When he was done, his toes pressed up against the front of the boot.
He could climb in these.
He wouldn’t be needing the battle-ax anymore, so he hid it in the alley. Grer secured Rainer’s dagger in its scabbard with two leather ties he pulled from his tool bag.
“Good rule. Always carry a piece string,” the smith said.
Rainer then ran the belt through the frog loop in the knife’s scabbard and put the belt back on, the knife turned behind him.
“I’m ready,” Rainer said. “Let’s walk to the cathedral wall. Slow and easy.”
They would be exposed for a few eyeblinks. It was a moment of danger. If enough of the soldiers saw them, they would be dead. The front staircase of the cathedral spread out to either side of the main building, however. If they got to the wall without being noticed, the staircase would hide them from the soldiers in the square.
Whack, whack, whack.
These must be the final blows to the Olden Oak. Rainer risked a glimpse around the corner.
A huge creaking sound filled the air. Then the crackle of splintering.
For a moment all eyes in the square were turned away from them. They must be on the Olden Oak.
“Let’s go,” Rainer said, pulling Grer along with him.
They walked quickly across the street from the base of the buttress to the cathedral wall that formed the belltower. Grer tried not to show his limp. For a moment, Rainer got a glimpse of the square. Soldiers everywhere. But they were still looking away.
The upper branches of the Olden Oak fell into view, crashing into the flagstones of the square. There were only green buds, no leaves yet. The bare branches clattered against one another. Then he and Grer were hidden behind the back of the cathedral staircase.
Curse them. The oak had fallen. But he was here, and had a job to do.
An overwhelming urge hit Rainer. He pulled down his trousers in the front.
“What are you doing?” Grer asked him.
“I’ve got to take a piss.”
“Against the
cathedral
?”
“It’ll be okay with your divine beings, I think,” Rainer said.
Rainer did his business quickly. Then he pulled up his pants, tied the waist string, and buckled his belt.
“Ready,” he said.
He squeezed behind the shrub. It was too close to the wall. This might be a problem. There was no way Grer would be able to hide behind it.
Grer would have to figure that out.
Rainer jumped up to get a grip on the wall…and fell off.
“Don’t worry. Getting started is always the hardest part,” he mumbled.
He tried again. He didn’t leap so high this time. His feet found a crack, and the fingers of his left hand slid into enough of a crevice between stones to gain a hold.
I know how to do this.
He turned his knuckle bone to jam his finger into the crack. He moved his feet up. He twisted his finger again to release the jam and pull it out. He reached for another hold.
Rainer worked his way upward. He had to go fast, but he had to be careful. But this was not a sheer-faced cliff. It was a lot like climbing up and down the tower wall to his bedchamber. He could do that in the dark.
Soon he’d covered twenty hands or more.
This put him above the protruding cathedral stairs. He could see the soldiers in the square. Which meant if they looked up they could see him.
Don’t look up. Keep filling your buckets and talking. Nothing to see here.
Upward he climbed.