(THOB) Chapter 86: Madness (Patreon)

Bodies burned black.

The flames continued their feast.

The sun was beginning its journey to the other end of Vayla when a soldier came running in a panicked haze. At first he seemed maddened, crazed from the heat of the sun, or perhaps some over-indulgence in some form of the soldiers’ alcohol, a crime to deserve a good flogging.

However, he began garnering attention as the other soldiers he passed seemed to contract whatever frenzy he carried. They ran after him, panicked, like a herd of startled buffalos. They ran in a frenzy of their own towards the camp, abandoning whatever duties they had been charged with.

It was a time before the herald came close enough to be heard. One hand more active in his sprint than the other, he bellowed his warning with a terror that seemed to carry across the camp.

“MERDENDI!!!”

It took Ezril a moment to identify the shaft protruding from the man’s shoulder blade as the glow of the sun, cast over the field, gently grew a warmer shade.

Evening came.

The camp fell into a chaos. The men fell into panicked retreat. Most of them disregarded Noem’s bellowed commands. This wasn’t a retreat. Noem’s men fled, and with good reason.

The enemy spilled out from beyond the trees. Their charge was as frenzied and disorganized as the men they chased. Then another arrow took the messenger in the neck released from well over three hundred paces. As if heralded by it, arrows rained. They littered the sky like a thousand pinpricks on a patch of skin.

Ezril turned in his place, certain that his brothers had begun their retreat. The distance between them and the enemy was more than enough for a safe one. Few men had horses to ride. Their night ambush had needed more stealth than brute strength. It had required less horses than would’ve been normal. Now it would cost them.

Ezril frowned as he watched the men run. His eyes sought Lenaria at every turn. The scouts had said there was no sign of any other Merdendi group within a day’s distance. Then how are they here?! Ezril questioned with teeth clenched in anger. His mind reeled with the thought of Bilvion. That Oaf has sent us to our deaths.

His eyes found Lenaria and things became worse.

He froze, fixed in place, his retreat halted.

Madness!he thought. His gaze wandered quickly. The thought did nothing to dissuade him. He found what he sought. A quiver of arrow laid abandoned on the floor. It was a mess, trampled, discarded. But it was still useful, its arrows straight. He snatched it up. Utter madness.

He bounded towards Lenaria, weaving against the wave of the frantic retreat. His head bobbed to the right as an arrow whizzed passed to bury itself in the grass. A moment late and it would’ve taken his head.

Lenaria stood in place, swords drawn. She watched the horde draw nearer, the familiar lack of expression on her visage as their men scrambled away farther behind them. Ezril stood beside her now. He knew it would be pointless trying to convince her to run. Something about her lack of expression screamed dedication.

“She is a person with no care for her allies or even herself in battle.”

Ezril shook the words from his mind. He spared Lenaria a brief glance, resolving to have words with her should they survive. His frown twisted in disbelief at the sight he met.

She was smiling.

What had been a passive face, now held a gleeful smile.

She relishes this? he wondered, baffled. Only when she regarded him with a momentary glance—one briefer than his—did he realize the wrongness of his thought. She’s happy to fight beside me. It was ludicrous, complete insanity. Yet, for a moment, he thought, will she be happy to die beside me, too?

The question didn’t bring as much sadness with it as Ezril hoped. It made him feel wrong, like tasting a meal he’d sworn to hate only to find it satisfying, appealing, even. He shook the thought. Best not to find out.

He nocked an arrow, drew his bowstring, and took aim.

At the head of the Merdendi charge was a behemoth of a man perhaps seven feet tall and wide as a buffalo. Ezril’s first arrow took the man between the eyes from over two hundred paces. The second man was quick to respond but not quick enough. The second arrow took him in the eye as he swayed to evade it. Had it been an average bow of the realm, he would have been successful. Ezril’s was of significant difference. Its string was tighter and retracted faster. He nocked his third arrow and drew it all the way. He didn’t take aim.

The quiver was fifteen arrows short when the Merdendi closed in on them. Lenaria cut down the first to approach her. Ezril continued to let his arrows fly. Each dropped as many bodies as Lenaria’s blades drew blood.

“Always know how many arrows you have, always know how many you let go of,” Master Felvan had once taught Ezril. “The difference between knowing when you have no more and reaching for an empty quiver can be worth your life.”

His quiver was empty. Ezril didn’t reach to check. He ducked beneath a swinging blade aimed at his head and fell into a roll. He came up with an arrow he retrieved from a corpse, its head missing. He nocked it, regardless. He drew the bowstring as far back as he was accustomed, however, it was of little import; his target stood before him. The arrow skewered wide, taking the man in the shoulder instead of the intended neck, causing him to reel back a few paces. Lenaria’s blade took his head.

The fight raged on, Ezril long since abandoning the bow for his Sunders. Despite their enemies’ numbers there was a wariness in their approach whenever Lenaria was involved. Men seemed to second guess themselves in the heat of battle. The minutes seemed to stretch on for hours as bodies dropped by the heartbeat. There seemed no end to the horde.

Whilst Lenaria continued to paint carnage into the hearts of their foes with quick slashes and thrusts, Ezril could feel himself waning. The weights of the Sunders began to take their toll.

He had always been the worst of his brothers in the way of the blade. Now he felt like the child who had held a wooden sword for the first time only to have his hands jarred at every impact. But he knew better than to stop. A realization slowly dawned on him with every ever growing, sluggish swing: I was foolish to stay with her.

Lenaria spun from the reach of an assailant. She swung her sword in one swift motion. It took the hand wielding the blade. It took Ezril a moment to realize it would’ve taken his head. In the same fluidity, he leaned away, turned, and took the head of another.

Often, Lenaria used the step, covering greater distances than most men Ezril had seen. Each time, she left death in her wake before returning to his side as bloody as he was. He knew the blood belonged more to the enemy than to her, unlike the one that covered him, oozing from every cut, tear, laceration and bruise. If he had believed in the existence of gods, as the heathens do, and there was one of war, he had no doubt Lenaria would be…

His vision dulled. His footing wavered, and he nearly fell. Ezril turned on instinct. His body acting on its own, he parried a thrust. The blade skewed to the right. He’d parried it wrong, sent it up instead of to the side and the blade scraped his shoulder. Blood, thick and warm, spurted out like piss from a horse’s genitals. Any later and it would’ve been a fatal wound. Still, it was fatal enough.

Too lazy to slash, he thrust a stab of his own. He put his weight behind it. Backed by the force he put behind it, metal pierced through flesh and bone. He pulled the Sunder free. It held fast, gripped in flesh and bone. His strength did not suffice, so he left it. The man fell back, and Ezril’s Sunder went with him.

Lenaria scrambled after him then, avoiding slashes from assailants, not bothering to punish them for their actions. He noted the expression on her face but failed to register what it was. His mind was unstable, his vision dull. All that kept him alive was his instinct, and his body.

Reaching him, she took hold and pulled him to herself with a strength stronger than her size revealed. A thundering came a moment later, like a horde of lost banging against the threshold of truth, ranging in their demand for entrance. A cry of pain erupted where he’d stood. It was a moment before he noticed it had happened around them, and a moment more to realize it still happened around them.

Men on horses charged into the battle, ploughing everything in their path. And the only thing keeping him from them was Lenaria as she engaged him in a confused waltz to avoid each horse and lance. One step. Two step. Ezril’s mind counted in oblivion as he was twirled through the field.

There was a bellowing that rocked his head. The voices pierced through to issue incoherent commands. Another maelstrom ensued. This was less than the previous as soldiers charged passed them. Lenaria let him go this time. His vision spun, and he staggered. His hand reached out for stability, gaining hold on her wrist.

He stood finally, willing Vayla to stand still.

Lenaria looked at him, puzzled. She turned to join the fray, no doubt to finish whatever artwork she had left unaccomplished in blood. But he kept his grip firm, not from a want to remain on his feet this time, but from a want to keep her where she was. He could smell the blood around them. He knew without having to look what laid around them. After all, it had been their handiwork; hers more than his.

The confusion ebbed from her face as she took stock of him, noting the tattered state of his attire and the rondo of injuries on his body. She relaxed under his grip. Ezril let her hand fall, then fell backwards. His fall was cushioned by the hard bed of corpses that covered the grass.

He forced himself to a sitting position amidst his body’s protest that he remains still and looked at Lenaria. He found her sitting too. She tilted her head in one direction and his gaze followed very gently. At the end of it he found one of his Sunder still embedded in one of the bodies. He looked down at his empty hands before returning his gaze to it. A smile tugged at his lip in mild disbelief. The twin was nowhere to be found. He’d lost his Sunders. It was laughable. The seminary would have one of his limbs for it before giving him a new one. If they would give him a new one, that is.

Lenaria’s head fell back and the sound that escaped her lips shocked Ezril. She laughed heartily. It was a rich and beautiful sound that seemed to drown out the chaos that rumbled away from them. It was filled with relief, and happiness, and satisfaction. It was an evolution of her smile; a smile he knew he loved to see play on her lips. He found himself plagued with a fond smile.

But amidst all its richness, Ezril could hear the hollow ring of a sense akin to that of a person who had just realized how close they had come to being Tainted by the suffocating hands of regret. And that was something he understood.

Ezril’s smile grew wider. The moment his lips parted he leaned forward, wincing in pain. Lenaria fell silent. He looked up and his smile slid away, replaced by a grin. Even though he could not laugh, he took satisfaction in the smug smile his grin seemed to incite from her. He had walked into a storm with her that no man should survive, and he had come out alive; a gift in and of itself.

He snorted at the thought that he wouldn’t be able to laugh freely for a while, because amidst his injuries were three or four broken ribs he was aware of that would not allow it.

The battle was short-lived. The soldiers of the realm took victory with relative ease. The Merdendi fought, died, and, as was the case of the previous battle, lived long enough to become captives.