Chapter Forty-One Guthnyr #2
He made for the loudest screams, stepping over mauled Nihlvarians left in the wolves’ wake.
From the ongoing tumult of alarm, they were still wreaking death and confusion on the enemy column.
But Guthnyr could also hear the clipped, authoritative shouts that told of hardier souls seeking to exert command.
The first living foe he encountered was one such stalwart.
Fully clad in armour with the weathered features of a veteran, he was busy shoving a dozen fearful warriors into a defensive circle.
Fortunately, he failed to notice Guthnyr’s approach.
When Kohrvayl’s blade parted the veteran’s head from his shoulders, the group he had been attempting to rally disappeared into the fog with pleasing alacrity.
Only one remained, a pale-faced youth who promptly dropped his sword and fell to his knees.
He didn’t beg, just knelt and stared up at Guthnyr, a stark plea shining in his eyes.
“Run,” Guthnyr grunted, kicking the youth’s sword away. Sparing a glance at the Nihlvarian pelting into the mist, Guthnyr knew his mercy was most likely pointless. If Velkar’s wolves don’t get him, the Morvek or the Travka will.
He and Sygurn forged on, hacking down the unwary and scattering the craven. They encountered occasional knots of resistance, groups of two or three prepared to fight it out, but lacking the expertise to do more than die.
“Boys, for the most part,” Sygurn observed, nudging a boot to the corpse at his feet. “If this one’s seen more than a score of summers, I’d be surprised.”
“If they’re smart enough to run, they’ll see more,” Guthnyr replied, then ducked as he heard a familiar thrum in the fog to his front. The arrow cut the air above his head a split second later, followed by several more.
“Loosing blind,” Sygurn said, sinking to his haunches as another salvo of shafts whistled overhead.
Guthnyr heard a series of pained grunts and curses as the arrows found targets.
He recognised the familiar profanity of the Travka in the collective, indignant roar that came in response to the projectiles.
A solid mass dozens strong came charging out of the mist, arrows jutting from their shields and murderous intent upon their faces.
Before being swept along in the charge, Guthnyr recognised the woman who had griped about her stolen cook pot south of the Wehrtrova.
She yelled in wordless fury, a fresh cut upon her cheek and a hatchet raised above her head.
Guthnyr felt a pang of pride as he charged with the Travka.
Beggared and battered by life they surely were, but, unlike the raw unseasoned youths the Vortigurn had sent to face them, these folk knew how to fight.
They suffered another hail of arrows before closing on the Nihlvarians, Guthnyr gauging their numbers at perhaps fifty.
They had been formed into a decent line with shield bearers in front, kneeling to allow the archers in the second rank to loose.
But discipline crumbled the moment their enemy came fully into view.
Surging ahead of his warriors, Guthnyr laid about with Kohrvayl, wielding the kelvehr blade double handed, letting out a full-throated battle cry to instil yet more panic in an already disordered line.
The Nihlvarians around him wavered then, when the Travka’s rush struck home, broke and ran.
As was customary, some Travka immediately began rummaging the bodies for loot, but most sped in pursuit of their foes.
All around, the scene became one of chaotic slaughter.
Guthnyr saw the woman with the hatchet relentlessly smashing it into the already shattered skull of a fallen Nihlvarian.
But it wasn’t a complete massacre. Beyond her, a large man, helm-less with a maze of red ink covering his bald head, fended off no less than four Travka with a long-hafted battle axe.
His valiant stand ended when Sygurn darted forward, ducking under the axe’s swing to plant his own squarely in the bald warrior’s forehead.
“If it’s like this all along their line,” he said to Guthnyr, grinning as he jerked his weapon free of the foeman’s skull, “we’ll have this done in time for supper.”
His last word was smothered by a sudden blast of wind.
It swept down the low rise to Guthnyr’s left with enough force to send him reeling.
The fog thinned and then vanished in the space of seconds, revealing their surroundings in full.
Climbing to his feet despite the ongoing gale, Guthnyr saw that this battle had unfolded in an ugly sprawl along a track separating rolling grassland from the dense forest of the Shadow Track.
Turning about, he discovered that his initial guess had been incorrect.
The Vehlkasa and Halvor’s outlaws had already dispersed or slain their foes, meaning they must have emerged into the head of the Nihlvarian column rather than its middle.
The fog and the inexperience of their enemies had allowed them to inflict a great many losses, and no small panic on the Vortigurn’s host. But not all had fled.
Further along the track, he saw companies forming up as captains began to re-establish a vestige of order.
They were slow and poorly aligned, but may well have formed a decent battle line if the Morvek hadn’t come streaming out of the forest at that moment.
Having eschewed the constricted path of the Shadow Track, the war bands of many clans came streaming through the trees.
Their numbers were small at first due to the density of the forest, but they threw themselves upon the hated Rulchakin with such fury that their nascent discipline soon evaporated.
Arrows arched from the trees in even thicker swarms, felling dozens with every salvo while more and more warriors charged into the open, war clubs and spears reaping a deadly harvest.