Chapter 44: A Battle Joined

Landar, Sakura

Landar

I pushed power into my ax like I'd done a thousand times before, shaping the charge to unleash maximum force directly into whatever my target was going to be.

“There!” Exekial pointed with his sword at a clearing just under the second flare. Without it, we might have lost track of where the enemy was in between fighting enemy aerial patrols. Usually that had entailed dodging the attacks, or using spells at a distance until strange flying bugs mounted with what looked like medieval chinese peasants with spears and crank crossbows engaged the enemy enough for us to slip away.

“I see it!” I shouted over the rushing wind. The clearing made of two parts. On the western side stood several knights in glowing platemail, supported by a group of students. They were preparing to meet an on rush from the other side of the clearing.

Along the far edge of of the clearings tree line on the eastern side were dozens of heavy cavalry. Elves in powerful looking master worked articulated plate mail that looked like it barely weighed as much as the leaf patterns stamped into the metal, riding some of the largest horses I’d ever seen. These things reminded me of Slipneir, Odin's six legged steed from Norse mythology.

They had six legs, towered over most people, and horses, and had what I could only describe as a warlike disposition. Their teeth snapped, their hooves stomped, and several times I saw elfish riders forced to correct their mounts and force them back into the line.

Out in front of our allies stood a familiar feminine figure, wielding a spear with what looked like an extra long blade attached to it. Sakura was braced in a fighting stance, ready to meet the cavalry charge when it eventually came.

Brave, but stupid. Unless she just got caught out?

“They’re getting ready to charge!” I wasn’t sure if Ezekial heard my words, but it didn’t matter. The cavalry charge started half a heartbeat later. The air around us, some hundred yards over head rumbled lightly with the effect.

“Knights of the realm!” Ezekial raised his sword and it blazed with a power I’d rarely see the man use. Even when he was helping subdue me weeks prior. I looked around and found not only our group, but another pegasi knights squad had joined us.

They looked like they had already been through a few good fights already. So I wasn’t entirely certain how much help they would be in the counter charge. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

“To our allies, to our friends! Keep them safe!” The pegasi snorted in apparent instinctual challenge at their ground based cousins, while knights shouted their battle cries, and students joined in.

The effect was muted by the wind, and the beating of the enemy cavalry's hooves.

They had weight, and momentum. I wasn't entirely sure how much help we could actually be.

We dove directly at the lead elements of the enemy charge, but we were coming in fro a cross intercept. I wasn’t entirely sure we would hit the entire line, but rather tie up the northern end while leaving our allies exposed to the southern part of the charge.

I tried to point this out, but my words were lost on the wind as the pegasi under me gained height, then suddenly dived like a hawk.

Now is probably a bad time to hate heights! I shouted into my mind, and I clung to the saddle and Ezekails harness with everything in me with one hand, my ax still clutched in my other.

Yes boss, now is definitely a bad time. Good thing you're not, right?

I opened my eyes to see what we were doing, but that was a mistake. My stomach lurched still in free fall.

“For the duchy!” Ezekial shouted, and suddenly his sword was wreathed in light as a lance made of golden mana appeared around the weapon. Giving him the reach he would need to strike while diving.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Oh, wait. Is that why you’re bringing it up now? Because you’re afraid of heights?

Yes, yes it is.

Well Ezekial was definitely a bad choice then. Everyone knows he’s part of the Duke's personal bodyguard. Even though he’s one of the junior members, that still means he’s likely to take the field with one of the dukal pegasi. Oh. . . that might have been my job to tell you huh?

Yup!

Sorry boss, I’ll do . . .

Before Sid could finish saying what he was going to do the whole world shook, and suddenly I felt like I was in a fighter jet pulling up hard trying to gain altitude. I glanced around Ezekial’s shoulder and found he had an elf rider skewered on his light lance. The guy was still alive, and trying to pull himself closer.

Screw that! I held out my ax and cast Jet of Fire, trying to concentrate the flames into as tight a beam as I could.

It worked, and the still thrashing elven warrior was bathed in fire and quickly succumbed to his wounds. But it had a second effect.

Our pegasi lurched, and let out a terrified scream as it tried to change the trajectory of its climb away from the fire. My hand slipped, and I quickly found myself falling backwards and into thin air.

“Shiiit!” I shouted as Ezekial climbed, trying to regain control of his mount.

***

Sakura

The enemy charge shook the earth under my feet, and made the mud field in front of me ripple from the energy. Sky, are you alright? I asked as I brought my sword spear, or negata, into a defensive stance.

I hadn’t had too much experience with the weapon yet. But it was the only one I had that would work well defending against a cavalry charge. I thought about my bow, but I'd only have gotten a shot or two off before they got in close.

Mana coursed through my body, mixing with the chie I had infused my muscles with. I cycled as hard as I could, while holding the stance. My negata blade pulled behind me, the shaft held in my hands almost as if it were a sword.

They were only a few strides away, a heartbeat at most.

The wind howled over my head, and I could have sworn I heard someone yell ‘charge!’ from a great distance away.

Charge? But they’re already charging . . .

A mass of white and black feathers, horse hooves, and lances burning with light fell from the sky directly onto the charging line of eerily silent fae cavalry.

Mounds of horse flesh cleaved into each other. Hoves from the pegassi broke skulls, shoulders, and in one case the back of one of their ground based cousins. While teeth as sharp as that of a shark's bit into pegasi flanks, carving chunks of flesh as wide as a sword blade from the hide of our would be rescuers mounts.

Bound mana spells or ‘abilities’, chie arts, and even some advanced mixed energy techniques from both the elfish heavy cavalry riders, and the pegasi dragoons in their counter charge tore into one another as riders clashed even more fiercely then their mounts.

Several knights were pulled, or indeed lept from their feathered mounts to wreak havoc on the elvish warriors that were coming in behind the enemy cavalry. It was havoc, and was happening only a few feet in front of me.

We have to take advantage of this, or the enemy will rally. They outnumber us three to one, probably more. Sky said into my mind. His voice was pained, and his chosen affect gone, replaced with his ruthless assessment of the battlefield. It was an assessment I happened to agree with.

I tore across the ground, leaving the others to care for my charge. In less time than it took me to blink I was in amongst the enraged elvish mounts who were desperately trying to get at their attackers. But the pegasi had already slipped away, no doubt preparing a second charge at the enemy from another angel.

Elfish light infantry, not the slaves I had seen so common among their warfighters so far, but proper infantry with armor and weapons that looked like they had come from a proper smithy rather than a rusted scrap pile, poured in among the now stalled cavalry charge.

Some were panicked, others ready for a fight.

The first enemy I came to was mounted. I speared him through the spine then tore my weapon loose from his back, leaving him paralyzed or dead. It really didn’t matter. I brought my spear sword down in a cutting arc, ripping through the spine and ribcage of the creature I now knew as a predator.

Behind you!

I turned and caught the blade of a sword on the reinforced metal shaft of my spear. The reverberation made my teeth ache, as I twisted the spear and brought the sword up in a blow that cut the cavalry man's arm clean off.

His mount tried to retaliate but I side stepped its terrible teeth, spun the shaft so the blade pointed down, and brought across the creatures neck. Severing its spinal cord and sending the rider plummeting into the mud bellow.

Thank you Sky, this mud is slowing me.

Focus little viper.

I did as I was told and spun the blade around me in a wide arc, parrying several blows at once from the infantry who had finally filled in past the disrupted cavalry formation. Lets see how this Ability works.

I forced mana through the meridian in my left elbow, and vines lit with fire and burning black thorns erupted around me. Skewering and burning the Steel warriors, as they were pulled into the mud and drowned. Nearly a dozen of them were either burned, crushed by the vines, torn apart from the razor-like thorns, or drowned in the mud at my feet.

A plume of fire erupted over my head, and I looked up. Only to find a rather unexpected, but familiar figure falling directly down at me.