“In battle, we descend to the level of our training. You must know the proper cut to break a guard, not in your mind, but in your body, so that you can act and react without thought, without hesitation.”
* Hans Talhouer
☀
10th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
Trist wasn’t certain how the daemons knew where to place their portal, but it couldn’t have opened in a more convenient location to block the people of Camaret-à-Arden from being able to escape the village. Twisting lines and spools of glaring yellow light tore the very world back, like peeling an apple with the edge of a knife, and an oval gate taller than a man on horseback opened in the very center of the worn dirt road heading south.
Unlike the old Etalan road from Falais to Rocher de la Garde, there were no paving stones or cats’ eyes to light the way in the dark, just worn ruts from wagon wheels. There were certainly none of the ancient blessings worked into the stone that made Acrasia’s skin itch. Even if there had been, Trist doubted that would have stopped the daemons from coming.
“Men at arms, to me!” Trist shouted, hoping that his voice would carry. “Everyone else, to the manor!” He pulled his gauntlets from where he’d tucked them into his belt, settling them onto his hands one after the other. As he stepped toward the pulsing gate, where Kimmerian mercenaries in their onion-helmets and shirts of rings poured through two at a time, he drew his longsword. Acrasia stepped up beside him, but Trist shook his head. “Get them into the Ardenwood,” he told her, then sprinted down the road.
If he could get to the rift, Trist thought, he could hold them there. Only two at a time limited the enemy advance, like coming through a ravine in the mountains. One man could hold a long while in such circumstances. His boots ate up the dirt road in long strides, the muscles in his thighs and calves humming with orange-tinged power, drawing on the threads woven through his body, fed by his pumping heart. He was almost at the last two houses, one to either side of the road at the southern tip of the village, and the fourth rank of Kimmerian mercenaries was just stepping through: archers, these, with arrows already burning. One stepped to each side of the portal, behind the first four men who sheltered them with spears, axes and swords. They drew, and loosed their arrows, which whistled for a breath and then sank into the thatched roofs of the southernmost houses.
The tightly layered straw caught in an instant; the morning’s breeze fanned the flames, and tendrils of smoke began to rise from the two houses. Both archers reached back to their quivers and drew new arrows, but then Trist was on them.
Two spears thrust at him, but Trist caught them on the blade of his sword in a crooked cut, sweeping them aside and down into the dirt of the road to his left. Then, he was past the spear heads, in among the mercenaries, and he flicked the tip of his sword up to take the leftmost spearman in the throat. Broken steel rings flew up and toward the portal in a spray of bright red blood, and the man dropped his spear, clutching at the neck wound as he fell to his knees. Another pulse of blood squirted out between the dying man’s fingers, and Trist felt the Tithe shoot up his sword and into his arm. That one was for Acrasia.
An axe swung at him from the right, the edge of the crescent blade glinting in the early morning sunlight, while a sword thrust at him from the other side, and the second spearmen stumbled back, dropping his weapon and drawing a dagger instead. The Trist of three moons past would have died here, cut down in a reckless attempt to hold the mercenaries at the portal.
The world slowed, his vision tinged orange, and the three mercenaries felt to Trist as if they were moving at only half speed, as lazily as dandelion seeds caught on a breeze. Trist stepped around the sword thrust, spinning as he let it pass him, and raised his sword to the Ox Guard, setting aside the axe. Then, he stepped in, thrusting the tip of his blade into the eye of the axe-wielding Kimmerian. His sword sunk into the socket, and then past into the brain, to the depth of a hand’s width. A second surge flashed up Trist’s blade as the man fell, and this Tithe was for him. With the Tithe he’d saved from the skirmish with the outriders beyond the walls at Rocher de la Garde, that gave him two: enough to empower his Graal Boon, or Auberon’s Boon of Shadows. Neither was going to help him right in this moment, however, so he put it aside for later, kicking the pointed steel toe of his sabaton up between the legs of the surviving spearman as the man raised his dagger high. The Kimmerian crumpled, not dead but certainly wishing he was, as Trist’s sabaton came back covered in blood.
That left only the swordsman, and the two archers, who were just nocking their arrows. Trist put his boot on the head of the dead axe-man, and yanked his sword back out in a spray of blood and whatever foul fluids came from inside a ruined eye. He used the momentum to smash the pommel of his blade into the skull of the man with the sword, denting the steel of his onion-shaped helm inward at least an inch. The man’s fingers loosened around his sword hilt, and he crumped to the ground, the sword falling next to him. A horizontal swipe of Trist’s sword cut both bows, their strings, and the two Kimmerians’ throats, as well. Two more Tithes roared up his arm, for Auberon and Acrasia, and Trist would have finished the wounded swordsman and spearman right then if he’d had the time.
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He didn’t.
A massive daemon in scarlet enameled armor shouldered his way through the portal, kicking aside the corpses and wounded men Trist had defeated. Trist slid back, falling into a comfortable Plow Guard, with the hilt of his sword grasped in both hands in front of his left hip, and the tip of the blade pointing at the monster’s center of mass.
“You are the Exarch of the faeries,” the daemon spoke, in a voice like the rattling of bones. Its skin was as pale and bloodless as a corpse, beneath its red helm, stretched tight across a cadaverous face that looked like nothing so much as a skull. Its nostrils were large, and nearly vertical in an upturned nose, which made the impression of a corpse even more striking. It’s cheekbones protruded like crumbling cliffs, and its pale ears looked like what might happen if you took Acrasia’s delicate, pointed features and rolled them about on the ground with a baking pin until you’d crushed everything into cauliflower.
“I am Trist du Camaret-à-Arden,” he responded, taking a breath to steady himself. “Exarch of the Lady Acrasia. And you will go not a step further. These people are under my protection.”
“The childe of Cecilia,” it said, with a nod, drawing its own sword from a sheath at its hip. “I can smell Agrat on you true enough. Look upon your doom, mortal, and know that you die at the blade of Zepar, the Scarlet. I will step over your corpse, and where I walk, your people will fall barren.”
“You will not be the first daemon I have faced,” Trist countered. Why did so many of these creatures know his mother’s name?
“Not the first,” Zepar agreed. “But the last.” It raised its left hand, clenching the fingers into a fist, and frost spread across the dirt of the road, then up onto Trist’s sabatons. Four bodies jerked, then lay still, and the monster looked disappointed. “You have already Tithed them, I see,” it said. “No matter. There will be more soon enough.” The daemon raised its blade above its head, into High Guard, and then lunged forward, chopping down at Trist with enough force to split a tree.
Trist had come to know well the strength of daemons, and that he could not match it. Instead, he stepped into Zepar’s blow, raised his blade into Ox, and deflected the cut off over his left shoulder, harmlessly. By getting so close, he denied the monster most of its leverage, and sparks shot from where their blades met as he thrust forward at the monster’s gaunt, horrid face. Zepar jerked its head back, but Trist drew a line of black ichor along its cheek, and where his blade sliced the daemon, its pale flesh peeled back, turning black as if it had been burnt.
“You’re quick,” the monster hissed, as they both pulled back a step and began to circle.
At the moment, Zepar hadn’t done anything that would lead Trist to conclude he couldn’t beat it, given enough time. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that long. As their fight moved away from the yawning portal, more Kimmerian mercenaries poured through, two by two, and he couldn’t do a thing to stop them, because fighting a daemon required his entire attention. In his peripheral vision, Trist saw more flaming arrows arc up into the sky, and then fall down onto the houses of the village. He needed to end this quickly, or the village would be overrun.
Trist raised his sword up above his head in High Guard, threatening a strong downward cut, and Zepar dropped into a perfect Plow, promising an easy parry into Ox. The monster grinned. “Only faced daemons who fought with their claws, have you?” it taunted. “Let us see who is the more skilled swordsman.”
With a snarl, Trist lunged forward, but instead of cutting down, he spun his sword into a crosswise strike, held above his head, and slicing around parallel to the ground, spinning like the seed of a mountain maple. His blade came in from the right, and Zepar raised its own sword to meet it, the daemon’s greater strength stopping the cut easily. Trist used the bounce of the blades impacting to reverse his swing, cutting back over his head like a spinning wheel, forcing the daemon to shift its sword to the other side for a second block. Again, Trist swung the sword back to the right, and his lips twitched as he saw Zepar anticipating, already moving to block, falling for the feint. Trist checked his momentum and swung back to the left a second time, interrupting the pattern.
Trist’s longsword cracked off the daemon’s helm, sending chunks of enameled steel flying in a spray of black ichor, and Zepar stumbled back out of reach. Trist, on the other hand, settled into the ‘one-horn’ stance, blade extended out before him, tip pointed at the monster’s chest. “Two hits,” Trist breathed. “How many more will it take to strike you down?”
“Too many for you to save your village,” Zepar snarled. The side of its face was now soaked in black ichor from two wounds, one to the cheek and one to its skull. With a grimace, it wiped one gauntleted hand across its right eye, to clear the foul mess.
“You assume that I am alone,” Trist countered. They’d been fighting for a minute now, perhaps, and it had taken them off the road and into the grass above the riverbank. More importantly, it had turned them around several times, and Trist could see the village. Half a dozen houses might be burning, but he was no longer the only one facing the invaders.
With a solid, meaty thunk, an arrow with a black Iebarra-wood shaft slammed into Zepar’s chest, piercing the red enameled armor and knocking it back a pace.
“Glad you found us, Henry,” Trist called, with a grin, as more arrows began to fall on the Kimmerians. John Granger and a dozen other of his father’s men-at-arms rushed out of the burning village, clashing with the soldiers. Even Hywel, with his great smithing hammer, came running, slamming it into the side of a mercenary’s head with enough strength to crush the man’s steel helm like a gourd.
“We hold the portal!” Granger shouted, running a Kimmerian through and continuing on down the road.
“You were prudent not to come alone,” the daemon growled. “But neither did I.”
Overhead, the clouds began to gather, and thunder rumbled.