CHAPTER 5: CLASH OF STEEL AND BLOOD

Heart pounding, Falinor rushed forward over the beach.

Explosions cracked all around him and plumes of sand went up along with the disconnected limbs of his comrades.

In the sand-soaked blood that rained down, he peered on at the giants coming over the dunes. The black and brown-clad figures lumbered in their leather battle raiments studded with iron, their helmets bucket-like in design with holes punched into the metal so they could breathe, their eyes hidden.

The horns protruding from their tops were not just an aesthetic design meant to inspire fear, as one giant before him ducked down and gored the swordsman attempting to charge him.

Another explosion rocked nearby and Falinor’s balance waned. As he slowed, he narrowed his eyes amidst the falling sand as he glanced about for Joros. He was there, crying out as he slung his blade at the giant before him.

The giant came down with his two-handed sword, slicing a deep gash in the sand beside the large man, who arched in to cut the giant from the side, but his opponent put up his big arm and stopped the blade in mid-strike.

Falinor cried out and ran forward.

The giant turned, his horned helmet staring him down as he thrust in with the point of his blade. With a snarl and a reaction quicker than Falinor expected, the giant brought up his sword and parried his thrust.

He shouted, a shout not devoid of fear. Falinor brought his blade back and ran to his left, arching around the giant as Joros grunted while he did battle.

While the giant defended himself, Falinor’s intention was to get around him, but as he moved to do so, another giant crested the hill and paused as he glanced down at Falinor. He raised the javelin in his hand and threw it at him

Falinor jumped, landed in the sand and rolled, his eyes barely catching the poll-sized weapon sticking in the sand like a thin post.

“Falinor!” cried Joros.

The swordsman and partial mage turned his body and cried out, summoning a hot ball of magic that coalesced in the palm of his hand. The magic shook and he released the fireball. It connected, exploding into the giant’s back.

The large warrior cried out, stunned momentarily as the leather on his back was completely seared off, a large burnt rent in his flesh.

Joros screamed furiously, his sword flashing and clanging as the giant before him attempted to continue defending even after sustaining a fireball in his back, but the general line of battle had connected, and dozens of swordsmen rushed in and hacked the giant to pieces.

Curling in on himself, Falinor covered his head with his hands as the thunder of boots rushing forward to meet the line of giants passed him.

“Falinor!”

Joros came running and was almost bowled over by the army, but he managed to make his way to him where he offered a thick vambraced forearm. Falnor took it and the other man hauled him to his feet.

“You didn’t tell me you were a godsdamned mage, Falinor!” he shouted through a smile.

“That’s because I’m not.”

“Tell me more after the battle, my friend! Come! More giants await our blades! We’re winning this battle!”

Falinor ran to catch his friend who sprinted to the next giant defending himself against six blades. As Falinor glanced about the battle below the dunes, he saw that it was going well.

An explosion rocked the sand nearby. He flinched and raised the cross guard of his blade in front of his face. When he opened his eyes, what was left of two men smoked near the hole in the sand.

Farther up the beach, the mages pressed forward in their cowled cloaks. They moved their hands in complex ways and magic cracked forth in arching paths, fireballs were hurled and explosions rocked the lines of the giants.

Behind them, their crossbow teams scurried—three men compliments, each with an expert crossbow, a man to hold the shield and another to crank crossbow.

Falinor whirled around, back in the direction of the dunes. He rushed after Joros, kicking his burning legs. When he made it to the top, a giant had just done the same. He howled, coming in with a spiked cudgel. He swung the weapon as Falinor jumped back out of his long reach.

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While he could manage the odd fireball, Falinor was no slouch with a sword. He grunted, arching his wrists, his footwork, though hampered by the soft sand, was excellent. His blade flashed and his attacks knocked against the thick hide armor of the giant’s vambraces, but that did not stop the swordsman.

He pressed the giant, flicking the taper of his blade in quick slashes while intermittently changing his approach and arching in with more powerful attacks that, while not very dangerous to the giant, still posed a physical threat.

As the giant backed away, Falinor pressed forward, lunged and jumped, his boots landing directly into the giant’s chest.

With a grunt, his opponent fell back and rolled down the hill in a flail of limbs and kicked up sand.

Dozens more giants thunder past him. These carried rattling chains with morning stars.

Falan’s eyes widened.

“Look out!” he called among his fellow swordsmen on the dunes.

The giant in the lead dropped his morning star and began to swing the chain over his head, the deadly spiked ball arching around in a wide trajectory as he trudged up the hill with his fellow.

“Back away!” Falirnor said, and did just that while ten men at his sides did the same, their swords held high.

The morning star ball arching in, taking one of the men in the face. His head exploded in a spray of blood and teeth, his brain matter like crushed fruit on the sand.

Once the giants were atop the dune with them on more stable terrain, they pivoted on their heels. The chains whipped and snapped, cutting the air in deadly swaths of spiked fury.

This fighting technique by the giants was no lumbering and awkward attack. It was trained, it was practiced.

Two more swordsmen were caught in that whirling chain and the giant jerked the morning stars past him. They flung across the bodies of the men, the spikes taking them across their bodies, ripping through their armor as if they wore straw raiments.

Blood sprayed into the sand and the men fell. The one that did not fall dead, cried out in anguish as his ruined body spurted in red gouts.

Falinor took a hand off his sword hilt to hurl a fireball at the giant in front of him when another threw his morning star in his direction without warning. The swordsman lunged for the sand and fell, rolled as the first giant struck at him with heavy chains.

The metal whipped metallically as he rolled, and grunted. Something grazed his upper arm—the chain no doubt. He cursed loudly and whirled across the sand on his knees. The landed blow felt as though Falinor had been hit by a horse-drawn wagon thundering down a road. He grunted heavily and continued scrabbling over the sand to get away.

Making it to his knees feet again, he grasped his sword and winced, his left hand unable to take the weapon properly.

He backed away as more men fell to those morning stars, the sand flecked with blood in almost every area as men continued dying under that oppressive onslaught, an onslaught they had no idea how to counter.

“We need pikes!” someone called. “We need pikes!”

“Falinor!” Joros cried.

He glanced to his friend, saw the man tumble backwards twenty or so paced to his right. “Joros!” he bellowed, and trudged after him, ducking passed a small line of swords attempting to defend themselves against those morning stars.

A shield bearer took the brunt of one of those spiked ball. It pierced the shield and the man died under his defense without a sound as he crumbled to the sand.

The swordsman and minor mage, moved to assist him, reached out with his good hand. Men howled and died all around them as Joros kicked at the sand, trying to get away as he held his arm close to his chest.

Falinor reached out with his hand. “Joros!”

The giant struck out with his chains and morning stars.

“Falinor!”

“Joros!”

When the spiked ball landed upon Joros, it stuck into his chest, the sound of snapping bones and wet blood filling Falinor’s ears as he flinched away.

Blinking as he took back steps, Falinor saw the ruin that was Joros, a mass of caved in flesh that was his chest, the sand around his body soaked in blood.

A giant on his left swung his chains, feeling the last of the soldiers before them in a fury of bloody screams and high-pitched cries.

The giant moved forward toward Falinar and uttered something, his voice deep and alien, the words unhurried.

They filled Falinor with terror.

The giant leaned forward and reached out with his hand.

With a panicked cry, Falinor brought his sword down as hard as he could, the blade connecting with the crook of the giant’s arm. As the dismembered hand fell, the giant cried out furiously as he grasped the stump of his wound. Blood spurted across the sand and onto the swordsman who had taken that arm off.

The giant lunged forward with his horned helmet, the only weapon left to him in the moment.

Falinor was fortunate to be so close to the giant, as the horns missed piercing his body, but the iron helmet still thumped into his chest with a blow that felt like he had fallen against a tree at a dead run down a hill. His feet came off the sand and he heard himself grunt as the ground flipped, revealing the sky.

When he landed upon the soft sand at the bottom of the dune, all of the air was forced out of him.

Moaning, he moved and buried his face in the sand, unaware of anything but the need for air and the physical reaction of his body from such a painful blow in his back.

Lifting his head, Falinor’s vision swayed and blurred. All the sounds around him, the dying men, the giants screaming, the explosions from the tipped javelines, all sounded as though they came through a set of wooden walls. If he fell unconscious now, he might still survive if the giants were defeated.

He tried to glance at the field.

Saw the men of king Kindrin’s army in dispersed knots. Many of them were retreating.

A horn was blown.

Was that the sound of a general retreat?

Were they reforming their lines?

Who was winning the battle?

A javelin landed in the sand next to Falinor. He glanced at it, at the tipped head. It hadn’t exploded.

He flinched, jerked to his and scurried away.

And then the javelin exploded.

The world shook, the ground left him, and then it came back up into his face in a rush.