61. Ticking Clock
Chapter 61
Ticking Clock
20 th Day of the Blood Moon
Southeast of Camylin – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The thunder of Drunir’s hooves rippled through Dann as the horse galloped at full stretch. He hovered over the saddle, the horse’s body moving in free flow beneath him, his white wood bow in his left hand, his right hand on the reins. Ahead, the columns of smoke rose above the hill, screams piercing the still morning.
Dann risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The fifty scouts who rode with him were quite a distance behind, Erik among them. Their horses were no match for Drunir in the open plains. Even the six Dvalin Angan in the forms of giant white stags couldn’t keep pace, each galloping with an elf on their back, Vaeril at their head, Lyrei just behind him. Dann’s head told him to slow and let them catch up, but his heart told him that every second wasted would be a life lost on the other side of that hill.
They’d been scouting ahead of the main army, attempting to gauge the siege at Camylin, when they’d spotted the smoke and heard the screams.
“Faster,” Dann shouted. As though the horse had been holding back, Drunir lunged forwards, his stride opening, his hooves tearing the ground apart.
The village on the other side of the hill was in flames. Men and women fought Uraks with whatever they had been able to find: pitchforks, axes, knives, staffs. A handful were armoured in leather and gambeson, but most wore nothing but tunics and trousers. The Uraks ripped them apart.
As Drunir galloped down the hill, two of those monstrous Bloodmarked came into view amidst the flames, their dark claws tearing through flesh and bone.
Dann drew a sharp breath and brought his bow to bear. He slipped an arrow from the quiver he’d strapped to Drunir’s saddle, took a half-second to pick a target, and loosed.
The arrow punched into the side of an Urak’s head in the middle of the creature’s downswing. The beast stumbled sideways, then dropped.
Drunir responded to every shift in Dann’s weight, moving as though his body were an extension of Dann’s own. They swerved to the right, bounding over two bodies in the dirt.
Dann nocked, drew, and loosed twice in quick succession. Two more beasts fell, and the five men who had been fighting them turned to look at Dann, their expressions painted in surprise and shock.
He looked ahead to see the thick of the fighting lay in the village’s centre. Drunir wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre in there. He swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted, grabbing Drunir by the reins. “Go.”
The horse nickered, flapping its muzzle at him.
“Those things will tear you apart if you can’t move around them. Go.” Dann slapped the horse in the flank, then turned and loosed another arrow into an Urak’s heart, but the beast continued to charge, two more joining it.
Dann turned to the group of men who now stood at his side. “Go for the heart or the head. If you can’t, cut their legs from under them. Bring them down, then kill them on the ground.”
“Who are you?” An older man with grey-black hair and thin wiry arms stared at Dann’s armour, his gaze fixing on the emblem of the white dragon on his breast.
“A man with a bow.” Dann broke into a run, the men following after. It was at that point he realised he’d left his quiver strapped to Drunir’s saddle and decided that was something he would never tell Tarmon or Erik.
Hooves sounded over his left shoulder, and he turned to see Drunir galloping towards him, white-and-grey-dappled coat glistening in the light of the burning buildings.
“I thought I told you to run?” Dann snatched five arrows from the quiver without stopping, and Drunir charged onwards.
Dann’s heart stopped for a moment as a massive Urak with pale brown skin and a black spear in its hand came hurtling from the thick of the fighting and launched itself at the horse.
Drunir reared onto his hind legs and smashed a front hoof clean into the Urak’s face. The beast dropped backwards like a stone, a gaping wound of shattered bone and blood where the horse’s hoof had caved in its cheek.
As two more of the creatures charged towards Drunir, Dann howled, “Forward!”
He drove four of the arrows into the ground before him, then nocked the fifth, drawing and loosing in a fluid motion. He caught an Urak in the eye. The creature howled and stumbled backwards, only for Drunir to kick out with his back feet. The horse kicked the Urak with such power that the beast was lifted from its feet, and once it hit the ground, it didn’t get back up.
Emboldened, the five men charged past Dann, axes, pitchforks, and spears raised. He snatched a second arrow from the ground and loosed it into the second Urak’s throat. The men fell upon the beast, hacking and stabbing until it went limp.
As Dann leaned down to retrieve his third arrow, the thundering of hooves rose over the din of the battle. Lyrei, Erik, and Vaeril rode at the head of the cavalry as the horses and Angan flooded into the village and tore through the Uraks.
Vaeril leapt from the back of a white stag with all the grace of a kat, hit the ground, and rolled. He lifted his hands, and the earth cracked around him, spikes of solid rock rising and streaking through the air, finding a home in the chest of a Bloodmarked. The elf pulled that shimmering silver sword from its scabbard and drove it deep into the Bloodmarked’s gut, smoke pluming from the runes in the creature’s chest.
Lyrei planted an arrow in the Bloodmarked’s skull before three more skewered its neck, and the light of its runes died.
Erik led the rest of the cavalry through the centre. He swung his blade through an Urak’s face, opening the creature’s jaw from left to right, then drove the steel down through the eye of a second, dragging it free in a spray of blood.
Dann nocked his third arrow and loosed it into the temple of the Urak closest to Erik.
But even as the missile plunged into the beast’s skull, the second Bloodmarked ripped apart two villagers and slammed its shoulder into Erik’s horse. The horse screamed as it flopped on its side, unable to keep upright.
Erik leapt from his mount’s back before it hit the ground. He crashed down into the dirt, rolling and pulling himself to his feet.
Dann charged, snatching up and nocking his fourth arrow as he went. An Urak lunged at him from the right, taking a woman’s head from her shoulders with a sweep of its black steel sword without breaking stride.
Dann twisted and drew back his bowstring, only for an arrow to lodge itself in the centre of the Urak’s skull. He turned to see Lyrei nod at him from atop a white stag.
The Bloodmarked sent a shockwave of fire and earth through the street, everything in its path bursting into blazing flames, the ground cracking. Four of Dann’s scouts were caught in the fire, their screams echoing.
Erik, Vaeril, and several others hurled themselves at the Bloodmarked, carving open its thick hide, black smoke pluming from its runes. One swipe of the creature’s obsidian claws opened two chests and a second turned a woman’s face to nothing but mangled bone and blood.
Arcs of lightning streaked from Vaeril’s fingertips, but the Bloodmarked took the strike head-on, strips of flesh tearing free. The runes carved into its skin burned with a bright crimson light, and the beast unleashed a guttural roar. It drove its claws through a soldier’s chest, then sent a plume of fire washing over three more.
Dann sprinted forwards and loosed his arrow into the Bloodmarked’s throat, but it barely flinched, as though the arrow was nothing more than a fly.
As Dann reached for the quiver at his hip – the one that was not there – something crashed into his back, and he slammed into the ground, his head cracking off something solid. Blood streamed into Dann’s eyes and over his lips. He shook his head and wiped his face as he pushed himself up. He’d lost his grip on his bow. He rolled over onto his back just in time to watch the Urak standing over him drive its spear down.
Dann clasped his hands on the weapon, the blade slicing along his palms. He howled in pain, twisting and turning the blade left, forcing it into his shoulder instead of his chest. He swore he could feel the steel scraping bone, peeling open his skin and carving through muscle.
A neigh more akin to a roar rang out, and Drunir slammed into the Urak’s side.
The Urak hit the ground hard, and the horse leapt over Dann, trampling the creature, hooves smashing down over and over. Drunir pulverised the Urak’s chest, splattering Dann’s face with blood and bits of bone.
“Need a hand?” Erik appeared over Dann.
Dann bit back a grunt, the steel tip of the spear pinning him in place. His shoulder screamed in pain, but he didn’t want to give Erik the satisfaction. “Actually, I was thinking of staying here a while,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s quite comfortable.”
“Hmm.” Erik wrapped his hands around the spear shaft and pulled it free.
“Gah!” Dann lurched upwards, the steel slicing him open for a second time, scraping his armour. He took Erik’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Could you not have been a little gentler?”
“I can put it back in if you like?”
Drunir leaned forwards and nickered, pressing his muzzle into Dann’s cheek.
“You should have listened to me.” Dann pulled his injured arm close, blood flowing out over the steel of his spaulder, the gashes on his hands flaring in pain.
The horse blew a long breath of warm air over Dann’s face, flapping his lips.
“Fine. Thank you. I don’t know how I’d survive without you.”
A group of the villagers approached, battered and bruised, many limping, others burnt or bleeding. Perhaps fifty in total, three hounds walking between them and eyeing the Angan askance.
A short woman in a torn, blood-stained dress decorated with a spear in her left hand stepped from their number. She didn’t look much older than Dann. Her gaze moved from Dann to one of the elves who rode a Dvalin Angan.
“Thank you.” She planted the butt of her spear into the earth.
“It is our honour. Though I wish we had come sooner.” Dann looked about at the burning village, the slaughtered horses in the street, the butchered sheep in pens. Everything these people had called home was now dead. “The bulk of our army marches behind us. If you wish it, we will escort you west. There is a settlement there on the coast. It is where we are headed.”
“This is all we’ve ever known.” The woman glanced back at the rest of the villagers, her gaze lingering.
“You need not make your choice now,” Vaeril said. “We ride northwest to Camylin, but I will stay and tend to your wounds. When the rest of our forces arrive, you may choose then.”
“You ride to Camylin?” An older man with a thick grey beard moved forwards.
“Aye.” Erik raised a curious eyebrow. “What have you heard?”
“Trader passed through last night, said Camylin had fallen with the setting sun. And that the Uraks move west.”
“West?” Dann’s heart quickened. “You’re sure?”
“Sure as I am the grass is green.”
Dann turned to Vaeril and showed him his sliced palms. “Can you do something about these and my shoulder? I’ll send a messenger back to Tarmon and the others, tell them to quicken their pace, then ride for Camylin.”
By the time Dann dismounted on the plains before Camylin, the sun was at its peak in the sky, its light blending with that of the crimson moon. The first time he had laid eyes on the city, he’d marvelled at the red slate rooves, the enormous walls, and the massive cylindrical towers. It was the first city he’d ever seen, the only time he’d ever gone further than ?lm.
Now those red rooves were shattered and broken, smoke billowing into the sky. Whole sections of the walls had collapsed, and only three towers still stood. It was a ruin.
Dry grass crunched beneath Erik’s feet as he moved to stand by Dann’s side, Lyrei with him. “Heraya embrace them.”
“Camylin held tens of thousands of people.” Dann stared at the smoke rising from the destroyed city, the ruins of the central keep still towering above all else. “Surely some of them made it out alive.”
“Perhaps,” Erik said. He let out a long sigh. “But they were surrounded on all sides, under siege for months…” He looked to Dann. “If the Uraks that did this are marching west…”
“Then we must march faster. We’re a day behind.” Dann rolled his neck, pressing his fingers against the puncture in his spaulder. Vaeril had knitted the wound and mended the bone, but the stiffness remained, an ache in his muscles. At least now he would have a scar to match the other shoulder.
Dann turned and swung himself into Drunir’s saddle. “All this is for nothing if Salme is already gone by the time we reach it.”
Erik climbed into his own mount’s saddle, his gaze still fixed on the smoking city. “I’d hoped Calen might have been with us by now.”
“You and I both.”