Sword Saint by Michael Wallace

Author:Michael Wallace [Wallace, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Balsalom Publishing
Published: 2020-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Miklos approached the battlefield at the head of twenty horsemen. He and his riders left the post road, crossed a pair of swales, and jumped over a low-slung wall meant to hem in cows. An hour earlier they’d stumbled across a reserve force of around two hundred of Lady Damanja’s troops, marching hard up the road, and if not for a quick flight from the road, Miklos would have found himself in trouble.

But the enemy troops had no more than a dozen riders of their own, and they were not Damanja’s vaunted wolfhead riders. Instead, the mounted forces seemed to be officers, and by the time they recognized the riders as enemies, Miklos and his men had slipped free and ridden to safety.

The battlefield would be easy to find for either side, given the huge flock of crows wheeling overhead to the northeast. And like men and horses, new crows were flying in to join the excitement. Following them was a simple matter. Among the flock were the darker, more numerous crows of Lord Zoltan, along with the larger, raven-sized crows of Lady Damanja. Hard to say if any of Balint’s were on hand, but Miklos didn’t think so. Not yet.

Riding cross-country slowed their pace, and so Miklos kept hooking back toward the mountains to regain the post road. His company would ride down the brick surface for ten or fifteen minutes, only to run into various choke points Damanja’s troops had set up. These enemy forces grew larger and larger as they approached the battlefield, soon large enough to pose a threat, and he couldn’t afford to start a fight.

Not with twenty riders. Maybe if he hadn’t sacrificed sixty men at the bladedancer temple and left several more behind with serious wounds, abandoned at Hooffent to recover beneath the baleful eye of the volcano trying to bury the village with lava. Miklos had gathered the remnants and ridden hard for the plains.

Davian, one of the men who’d stayed with the horses during the failed attack on the bladedancer temple, rode alongside him as they cut away from the post road yet again. Davian was a veteran of numerous wars, with twenty years of campaigning for Lord Zoltan to his credit, and a terrible scar that ran from his mangled right ear, down his cheek, and disappeared into his beard. More scars on his arms, chest, and legs attested to other battles, other sacrifices in the service of the crowlord.

Two months ago, Miklos had turned Davian to his side with one single sentence. “All those scars, all that blood spilled, and you’re still earning a common soldier’s wage? What has your loyalty earned?”

Now, Davian said, “The lady herself is on the battlefield, if the crows are to be trusted. And all those checkpoints. This isn’t a punitive attack, this is something more.”

“Did you think it would be so simple?” Miklos asked. “We offended Damanja’s honor—she had to respond. All these crowlords are the same, all ready to go to war over a slight.

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