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Frostborn: The False King
Frostborn: The False King
Frostborn: The False King
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Frostborn: The False King

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Ridmark Arban is the Gray Knight, leading the war against the malevolent Frostborn.

After a year of battle, the war has ground to a bloody stalemate. Unless Ridmark can find new allies, the Frostborn will win through slow attrition.

But the shadow of the Frostborn has fallen over all lands, and Ridmark might not live long enough to find new allies...

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 4, 2016
ISBN9781311355300
Frostborn: The False King
Author

Jonathan Moeller

Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very captivating book. Extremely Hard to put down! Can't recommend highly enough.
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    i am skipping whole fight scenes bc its redundant and repetitive. i'm trying to get to the end of the series and be done with this book. fortunately, its a free read bc i would not pay for it

Book preview

Frostborn - Jonathan Moeller

Chapter 13: The Red King

Chapter 14: Dissension

Chapter 15: Brothers

Chapter 16: Shakaboth

Chapter 17: A Hunter’s Challenge

Chapter 18: Unarmed

Chapter 19: Hunter and Prey

Chapter 20: Shadows

Chapter 21: A Contest Of Princes

Chapter 22: Vengeance

Chapter 23: Orders of Battle

Chapter 24: The Future

Epilogue

A Second Author’s Note

Glossary of Characters

Glossary of Locations

Other books by the author

About the Author

Description

Ridmark Arban is the Gray Knight, leading the war against the malevolent Frostborn.

After a year of battle, the war has ground to a bloody stalemate. Unless Ridmark can find new allies, the Frostborn will win through slow attrition.

But the shadow of the Frostborn has fallen over all lands, and Ridmark might not live long enough to find new allies...

***

Frostborn: The False King

Copyright 2016 by Jonathan Moeller.

Smashwords Edition.

Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.

Ebook edition published July 2016.

All Rights Reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

***

A brief author’s note

At the end of this book, you will find a Glossary of Characters and a Glossary of Locations listing all the major characters and locations in this book. Note that the Glossaries contain spoilers for the previous nine books of the Frostborn series.

A map of the realm of Andomhaim is available on the author’s website at this link (http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer/?page_id=4487).

***

Chapter 1: War Unending

Four hundred and thirty-one days after it began, four hundred and thirty-one days after that day in the Year of Our Lord 1478 when blue fire filled the sky from horizon to horizon, Ridmark Arban walked alone through the ruined village.

At least, he was alone for now.

He didn’t think he would stay that way for much longer.

When the others found him, there was going to be a fight.

He stopped in what had once been the village’s forum, staff ready in his hands, his eyes scanning the ruins.

Once this village had been known as Liavatum, and it had been one of the scores of small villages dotting the forested hills and valleys of the Northerland. Like all villages in the harsh Northerland, Liavatum had been well-fortified against raids, whether the pagan orcs of the Wilderland, the Anathgrimm of Nightmane Forest or the kobolds and dvargir of the Deeps. A stout stone wall had encircled the village, its houses and church built of worked stone, and a strong stone keep had risen from the center of the village.

The defenses had held back the wild orcs and the kobolds, but the Frostborn had smashed them.

Great breaches had been torn in the outer wall, the gates lying in shattered rubble. The houses and the church had burned, leaving only stone shells, and the broken crown of the keep clawed against the gray sky like jagged fingers.

Ridmark did not know what had happened here. The army of Dux Gareth Licinius had evacuated the towns and villages along the Moradel road as they fled south, but they had not been able to reach every village in the hills. Perhaps the villagers had fled, either to the safety of Castra Marcaine or the warded trees of Nightmane Forest. Or perhaps they had all been slain or carried off into captivity as slaves for the Frostborn.

Ridmark had seen many such dead villages over the last year, left behind as the Frostborn had swept across the Northerland from their strongholds at the ruins of Dun Licinia and Black Mountain. Nearly all of the Northerland, save for the lands around Castra Marcaine, had been overrun by the Frostborn. The Frostborn had converted some of the ruined villages into strongholds, their khaldjari engineers raising fortifications of enspelled ice and stone. Other villages had been abandoned.

And some, like the ruins of Liavatum, the Frostborn used as staging grounds, waypoints as they sent more soldiers to the siege of Castra Marcaine.

Ridmark suspected one such group of soldiers would pass through Liavatum today.

A flicker of blue overhead caught his eye, stark against the gray thunderclouds.

Ridmark broke into a run, ducking into the stone shell of what had once been a tavern. He pressed himself against the doorway, drawing his gray cloak close around him. An instant later a creature flew overhead, its vivid blue carapace stark against the darkening sky. It looked like a winged mantis, albeit a mantis the size of a hunting hound, the gossamer of its wings blurring over its back, its scythe-like forelimbs sharp enough and long enough to gut a man with a single blow. The creature’s head turned back and forth, eyes like black jewels surveying the ruins of Liavatum, but it did not see Ridmark.

He watched as the locusari scout circled the forum twice and then descended towards the ruined church.

Ridmark considered that. The Frostborn would not scout a ruined village unless they had a use for it. Almost certainly they had sent another detachment of soldiers to Castra Marcaine, and those soldiers would use Liavatum as a campsite for the night. If he left at once, he could warn Qhazulak and Caius and Third and the others, and they could prepare an ambush for the medvarth and locusari warriors that would make up the bulk of the Frostborn force.

Or, if he attacked now, perhaps he could eliminate a few of the Frostborn scouts. The Frostborn were inexorable and patient and logical, but even the wisest man needed sound information to make good decisions.

It would also provide an outlet for the rage that had burned within him ever since he had strode into the hall of Dun Licinia’s keep to find Morigna dead upon the floor.

Ridmark glided forward, walking in silence towards the ruined church.

The main doors had burned in the destruction of the village, but Ridmark was not foolish enough to use them. Instead, he circled to the side, dropping to a crouch, and peered through the windows. Like most of the churches of the Northerland, the church had been built to double as a refuge for the women and children during an attack, so the windows were high and narrow to thwart any raiders. Through the window Ridmark saw the tangled, charred beams that had once been the church’s roof, collapsed in a heap upon the floor. He also saw the locusari scout perched upon one of those beams, and the creature spoke in a tearing, rasping metallic voice.

Ridmark eased to the side, trying to see more. If the locusari had come to report to one of the Frostborn, Ridmark would not try to fight a Frostborn warrior by himself.

But his luck held. The locusari scout spoke to two khaldjari. The khaldjari were distant cousins to the dwarves of the Three Kingdoms and the dvargir of Khaldurmar and shared their same gray, granite-colored skin and blunt features. Unlike the dwarves of Khald Tormen, the eyes of the khaldjari shone with a harsh white glow, like the sun striking ice in the heart of winter. They wore chain mail and carried maces at their belts, though Ridmark knew from hard experience that the khaldjari had no need to rely upon weapons of mundane steel.

As far as he could tell, the two khaldjari and the locusari scout were the only occupants of the church. Three foes in all.

Ridmark thought he could take them. If he did, they could not return to warn their masters of the danger, and that would make it all the easier for his own warriors to strike.

If he killed them.

He circled to the front of the church in silence, slinging his staff over his shoulder from its leather strap and lifting his bow. Ridmark next to the church’s main doors, listening to the khaldjari and the locusari. Even after a year of constant warfare, he only understood bits and pieces of the Frostborn tongue. The khaldjari and the medvarth and the cogitaers and the others seemed to have their own tongues, sometimes slipping into a hybrid blend of the Frostborn language and their own language while speaking. Nevertheless, Ridmark suspected the khaldjari were arguing with the scout. That was a waste of time. The locusari were literal-minded and always followed their orders.

Fortunately, the argument made for an excellent distraction, and Ridmark decided to use it.

He took a deep breath, steadying his hands, stepped into the doorway, and raised his bow. The khaldjari had their backs to him, but the locusari scout could see him from its perch atop the blackened beam, and it started to shriek in warning.

The shriek got louder when Ridmark’s arrow punched through its left wing and slammed into its abdomen. The locusari scout reared back, trying to take to the air, but the arrow had destroyed its wing. The khaldjari whirled, raising their right hands. White mist swirled around their fingers, hardening into blades of glittering frost as strong as steel and as sharp as obsidian.

The two khaldjari charged, but Ridmark was already moving. He cast aside his bow and yanked his staff free. The staff was lighter than it should have been, yet it still struck as if had a core of iron.He met his enemies, trading half-dozen blows with them in as many heartbeats, the staff clacking against the blades of magical ice. A deathly chill radiated from the swords, sinking into Ridmark’s limbs, and a layer of frost spread across the surface of the staff, its length growing cold beneath his grasp. Soon it would be too cold to grip.

Ridmark let the khaldjari drive him back, and then he twisted, dodging a thrust from the khaldjari on the left. The glittering blade of ice missed him by an inch, and the khaldjari stumbled, off balance. Ridmark whipped his staff around, shattering the khaldjari’s outstretched wrists, and then swung again, his weapon striking the back of the khaldjari’s knees. The gray-skinned warrior fell with a cry of pain, shouting words in his strange language.

The second khaldjari came at Ridmark, and he deflected the swing with his staff. The impact knocked the weapon from his grasp, so he sidestepped again, yanking the dwarven axe from his belt. The khaldjari warrior did not react in time to Ridmark’s new attack, and the bronze-colored blade crunched into his neck. Ridmark ripped the weapon free, the khaldjari’s white-glowing blood steaming with cold upon the blade, and spun as the wounded locusari scout attacked. He retreated as the creature swiped at him with scythe-like forelimbs, and chopped with the axe. The weapon of dwarven steel snipped off the locusari scout’s front right limb, and the creature stumbled.

Ridmark buried the axe in its head, right between its pincers. The locusari scout shuddered and went limp, collapsing to the floor of the ruined church in a tangle of gleaming blue limbs. He ripped the axe free, the yellow ichor that filled the locusari scout’s veins freezing as it mingled with the glowing blood of the khaldjari. One of the khaldjari was dead, but the other was wounded, scrambling backward as he raised his ruined hands and screamed words in his language.

Likely he was asking for mercy.

Ridmark did not have much mercy left in him.

Not after Morigna’s death. Not after the murder of the High King and the slaughter at Dun Calpurnia. Not after a year of grinding war, with most of the Northerland falling to the Frostborn and only the valor of the Anathgrimm keeping the Frostborn from tearing into the loyalist armies of Prince Regent Arandar.

Ridmark did not think he had any mercy at all left within him.

If he did, it wouldn’t be for the creatures of the Frostborn.

The khaldjari managed one final scream before Ridmark killed him quickly and efficiently. He cleaned the freezing blood from his axe with care. Once that was done, he recovered his staff and bow and stepped back into Liavatum’s desolate forum, watching for enemies.

As Ridmark stepped forward, blue fire flashed into the corner of his eye.

He whirled, bringing his staff up, and the woman stepped from the doors of the church.

She had not been there an instant earlier.

She was about his height, her face too angular to be human, her ears too pointed, her skin a little too white. Thick black hair hung in curtains alongside her narrow face, and she wore close-fitting armor the color of wet ashes, wrought of some black metal known only to the dark elves. Her eyes were usually flat and black and dead, but they glimmered with blue fire at the moment, the fire spreading through her veins like fingers of fire beneath her skin.

She had tried to kill him when they had first met, and now he trusted her.

Lord magister, said the woman, her voice as flat and dead as her black eyes.

Third, Ridmark said, lowering his staff. I told you to scout to the north.

I have done as you commanded, said the woman who had chosen the name Third for herself. It is as you surmised. A force of medvarth marches south for this village. They shall arrive by sundown.

How many? said Ridmark.

Three hundred, said Third. All medvarth, with a dozen locusari warriors serving as scouts. I do not believe they have seen the force with the Champion.

Any Frostborn? said Ridmark. Or cogitaers? The Frostborn were deadly, but their cogitaer servants were almost as dangerous.

I do not think so, said Third. I was unable to move close enough for proper observation. Employing my power generates light.

Ridmark nodded. You did well. Go join the others and tell Qhazulak and Kharlacht to prepare for battle. The warriors will probably want Caius to say a prayer first.

I should accompany you, said Third.

Ridmark shook his head. I’ll be fine.

You put yourself at unnecessary risk to engage the foe, said Third. The Queen asked you to refrain from unnecessary risk. She commanded me to protect you.

It wasn’t an unnecessary risk, said Ridmark. Those scouts will not report back. That increases our chances of success. Additionally, you can rejoin the others with greater speed. The sooner they are ready for battle, the sooner we can take the medvarth unawares.

Third stared at him. Few people could meet his gaze anymore, even among the Anathgrimm, but Third could still do it. He wasn’t surprised. Her black eyes were ancient and heavy with old grief, and she had seen carnage and horror beyond his ability to imagine.

But like the Anathgrimm, she was now free…and like the Anathgrimm, she followed Queen Mara of Nightmane Forest, and her chosen magister militum.

Very well, said Third. I shall carry your wishes to the Champion and the warrior of Vhaluusk.

Without another word, she vanished in a swirl of blue flame.

Ridmark shook his head and broke into a jog, heading for a gap in the ruined western wall of Liavatum. If someone had told him a year past he would one day fight alongside a former urdhracos and the soldiers of the Traveler, he would not have believed it.

If someone had told him ten years ago what he would be doing now…he would not have believed it.

If he had believed it, he might have killed himself in despair. Perhaps it was just as well no man could see his future.

A dark little voice wondered if it that would have been better, but Ridmark shoved it aside. There was killing to be done, and that was no time for self-doubt.

Ridmark hurried to the west, making his way to the camp. He moved with haste and care, scanning the skies and the pine forests around him as he jogged. The locusari scouts might be circling overhead, or a Frostborn upon a winged drake, and the locusari warriors moved through the trees with frightful speed. For that matter, all the old dangers of the Northerland had not ceased because of the invasion of the Frostborn. Urvaalgs and ursaars still prowled the wilderness, and the kobolds and dvargir launched their raids upon the surface. The war had made them even more dangerous, giving them chaos to exploit.

A short time later he came to the camp.

The two hundred Anathgrimm warriors under his command had raised their camp at the base of a rocky hill, shielding themselves against attack from the south and the west. With the typical efficiency of the Anathgrimm, they had dug a trench and raised a low earthen wall around the camp, creating a small fortress for themselves. They raised fortified camps with a speed that the legions of the Empire of the Romans upon Old Earth in ancient days would have found enviable.

Four Anathgrimm warriors stood guard at the camp’s entrance, motionless as statues, but they acknowledged Ridmark’s approach with a tilt of their heads. Sometimes the men of the Northerland called the Anathgrimm the masked orcs, and Gavin had called them the spiny orcs, and Ridmark thought both descriptions accurate. Generations of focused magical mutations at the hands of the Traveler had made the Anathgrimm stronger and hardier and faster than normal orcs. The Traveler’s spells had also made the bones of the Anathgrimm hard as granite, and in places their skeletons burst from their flesh like armor, the black bone stark against their green skin. Masks of bone armored their faces, and bony plates covered their torsos. Spikes of bone jutted from their forearms, capable of acting as both shield and weapon. Even stark naked, an Anathgrimm warrior was better armed and armored than most human fighters…and the Anathgrimm preferred to go into battle armored in chain mail and steel plate.

They were the best soldiers Ridmark had ever seen, and it grieved him that the Traveler’s insane cruelty had made them that way. The Traveler was dead in the depths of Khald Azalar, and now only the ferocity of the Anathgrimm had kept the Frostborn from overrunning the entire Northerland and possibly all of Andomhaim.

Lord magister, said one of the guards. Shall we have battle this day?

We shall, said Ridmark, and the Anathgrimm nodded with approval. God had made fish to swim and birds to fly, Jager liked to say…and the Traveler had made the Anathgrimm to fight.

He strode into the camp. Third had returned, and stood motionless as a statue, her head bowed, her hands resting upon the hilts of the swords at her belt. The Anathgrimm feared nothing, but they nevertheless gave Third plenty of space.

Nearby stood the rest of Ridmark’s lieutenants.

Third tells me, said Brother Caius, that we have fighting ahead of us. He was a dwarf of Khald Tormen, short and broad with skin the color of gray granite and eyes like blue marble. Even after the last year of fighting, he still wore the brown robes of a mendicant friar and a wooden cross on a cord around his neck. Beneath his robes, though, he wore the dark elven armor they had taken from Urd Morlemoch, along with additional armor taken from the Traveler’s armories in Nightmane Forest.

Several hundred medvarth, said Ridmark. They are planning on using Liavatum as a camp before continuing to the siege of Castra Marcaine.

Good, rumbled Qhazulak. The old Anathgrimm orc was the Champion of Nightmane Forest, the most respected warrior of the Anathgrimm. It had gotten easier for Ridmark to tell individual Anathgrimm apart, despite their bone masks, and Qhazulak’s appearance was more distinctive than most. Old scars marked his green skin, and his voice had a harsh rasp from a lifetime spent shouting commands in battle. It has been too long since we have seen battle.

Two days, said Camorak, scowling at the Champion. Most of the Magistri Ridmark had met wore flowing white robes, bound about the waist with black sashes. Camorak had once been a man-at-arms in service for Dux Kors of Durandis, and he wore chain mail and leather. Instead of a white robe, he wore a long white coat. At least, it had started out as white. Now it was mottled gray, though white patches still showed here and there. Camorak had a lined face and gray-shot hair, though his eyes were much less bloodshot now that he had little access to drink. We fought that khaldjari band two days ago.

It has been too long, said Qhazulak. Now we shall see battle, and we shall put our foes to flight.

Camorak drew breath to respond, but Kharlacht spoke first.

What is our plan of battle? said the Vhaluuskan orc. He had changed little in the year and a half since Ridmark had first met him upon the slopes of Black Mountain. Kharlacht remained tall and strong and somber, his black hair cut in a warrior’s topknot, his green-skinned face forever scowling behind his tusks.

The easiest approach to Liavatum is from the north, said Ridmark. An old road climbs the hill and approaches the gate. There the medvarth will have to pass through a narrow defile. If we strike them from both sides, we will take them by surprise and cut them in half.

Qhazulak grunted. We just face medvarth?

I saw the medvarth, along with a dozen locusari warriors, said Third, not looking up. She didn’t look like she was paying attention, but Ridmark knew that her vigilance never wavered.

It is rare for the medvarth to go anywhere without the supervision of the Frostborn, the khaldjari, or the cogitaers, said Kharlacht. They are too violent, and left to their own devices will turn upon each other.

I saw no Frostborn, said Third. It is possible there were khaldjari or cogitaers among them.

Let us hope for cogitaers, said Qhazulak. They are frailer than the khaldjari.

More dangerous, though, said Caius.

Qhazulak gave an indifferent shrug.

A young man approached, wearing chain mail and a leather jerkin, a sword at his belt, and a shield slung over his shoulder. He was about fourteen years old, and looked a great deal like his father – the same dark eyes, hawkish nose, and dark curly hair, though his face lacked the grim, weary cast of his father’s expression. Prince Regent Arandar had sent his son and heir Accolon with Ridmark, hoping to keep him safe and out of reach of the false king Tarrabus Carhaine and the Enlightened of Incariel.

Here in the Northerland, Accolon was indeed out of reach of Tarrabus and the Enlightened. As for safe…well, there was no safe place left in Andomhaim.

Lord magister, said Accolon, holding up a waterskin.

Thank you, said Ridmark. He took a long drink and passed the waterskin back. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he had grown. Wait here.

Accolon nodded, his expression calm. He had been serving as Ridmark’s squire ever since Dun Calpurnia. If they were victorious, Arandar would become High King, and Accolon would become the High King one day in his father’s footsteps. He needed to know how to command men in war.

Of course, Arandar would only become High King if they found a way to defeat Tarrabus Carhaine, if they found a way to reunify the realm and drive back the Frostborn. Else the Frostborn would add this world to their Dominion, and Tarrabus would rule Andomhaim as the satrap of his Frostborn masters.

If Ridmark was honest with himself, he knew that was the most likely possibility…but he would not surrender. If the Frostborn wanted to conquer the world, he would make them fight for every bloody inch so long as he still had breath.

An ambush would be the best way to proceed, said Kharlacht.

We need to exercise caution, said Qhazulak.

Caution? From you? said Camorak.

The warrior must see the battlefield as it is, rather than how he wishes it, said the old Champion. The medvarth, when startled, fly into a berserker fury. They are dangerous opponents.

But if they are packed together in that defile, said Caius, likely their fury will turn upon each other. We have seen it before.

Third, said Ridmark. How far are the medvarth from the defile?

Perhaps two and a half hours, said Third. At last, she lifted her face, her dead black eyes regarding them. The Anathgrimm didn’t flinch. Accolon swallowed but didn’t look away. Ridmark would have to compliment him on that later. The High King could not afford to show weakness. Maybe slower, maybe longer. I did not see much of the terrain between the enemy and the village.

I did, said Ridmark.

When? said Kharlacht, surprised. You were not gone that long.

Fifteen years ago, said Ridmark, when I was still a squire. Dux Gareth rode through the hills to visit his vassals, and I accompanied him. Tarrabus Carhaine had been there as well. Pity that a stray arrow or a kobold raider hadn’t killed Tarrabus then. The realm would have been better for it. Let’s move.

The Anathgrimm broke camp, and they hastened to the east, making for the old road leading to the ruins of Liavatum.

###

Ridmark crouched behind a boulder, watching the road.

Boulders and pine trees littered the hill’s slopes, the ground carpeted with pebbles and pine needles. It was difficult to move in silence upon such ground, and the Anathgrimm had made a hellish racket getting into position. But now they were in place, and the bone-masked warriors waited in perfect silence.

Third had not lied when she said the road passed through a narrow defile. It was so steep that it was almost a gully, and Ridmark’s hiding place was nearly fifteen feet above the road proper. Any force passing along that road would be hideously vulnerable to an ambush. Despite their savagery, the medvarth were not stupid, and neither were their commanders, and they would make sure to send out scouts.

Fortunately, Ridmark had his own way of dealing with scouts.

Blue fire swirled next to him, and Third appeared, resting upon one knee, twin short swords of dark elven steel in her hands. The blue metal of the blades gleamed beneath a layer of yellow ichor from dead locusari warriors.

I have accounted for seven of the locusari warriors, said Third.

Only seven? said Ridmark in a quiet voice. He heard the distant tramp of armored boots against the ground. I thought there was at least a dozen.

Yes, said Third. The remainder screen the rear of the medvarth warriors. They fear attack from behind. Given your previous tactics against the enemy, this is a prudent fear.

Ridmark nodded. Then be ready.

He waited as the tramp of boots grew louder, and the first of the medvarth warriors came into sight.

Sir Constantine Licinius had once described the medvarth as bears that walked as men, and Ridmark thought that as good a description as any. The heads of the medvarth were like those of bears, though with flatter features, narrower eyes, and larger fangs. The creatures stood between six and seven feet tall, their bodies heavy with muscle. Like bears, jagged spikes of greasy fur covered their hides, though they wore steel plate armor and carried swords and maces and axes. The Frostborn had found the medvarth upon some distant world and now used them as foot soldiers in their armies. The medvarth marched in formation, though each soldier kept a few feet from the others. In battle, the medvarth worked together, but in the absence of foes, they often fought amongst themselves.

Ridmark hoped he could turn that to his advantage.

He glanced back at Kharlacht and Caius. The half of the Anathgrimm warriors that remained with Ridmark were ready. On the other side of the defile waited Qhazulak with the other half of the warriors. Behind the Anathgrimm were Camorak and Accolon. Accolon had his sword and shield out, while Camorak has his club ready. The Magistri were forbidden from spilling blood with the sword, so in battle Camorak beat his enemies to death with a club. Ridmark wanted them both to stay out of the fight. Accolon, because he was the heir to the throne of Andomhaim. Camorak, because he was the only one who could heal the wounded.

But the fight might come to them anyway. Ridmark had been only a few years older than Accolon when he had killed the urdmordar Gothalinzur in combat…and he had been younger than Accolon when he had killed his first foe in battle. Boy or not, Accolon had already killed enemies in battle.

Ridmark pushed aside the thoughts.

The medvarth column moved into the defile, the narrow space forcing them to go only four abreast. Ridmark set an arrow to his bowstring in silence. This would have to be timed perfectly. Too soon and the medvarth could recover. Too late, and the medvarth would have moved up the hillside, giving them the high ground.

He waited, his heart thundering in his ears, watching as the medvarth climbed the road, gauging their numbers in his head…

The moment had come.

Now! roared Ridmark at the top his lungs, shooting to his feet.

He raised his bow and released, sending an arrow into one of the medvarth warriors. The shaft hit the creature in the shoulder, and it staggered back with a snarl, glaring up at him. As one every single medvarth looked up at him.

At the same time, the Anathgrimm surged to their feet, drew back their arms, and flung their javelins in a high arc. The soldiers of the Empire of the Romans upon Old Earth had used a similar tactic, throwing heavy iron javelins to disable the shields of their foes. Ridmark had never found out if the Traveler had copied the tactic and instructed the Anathgrimm in its use, or if it had originated during the long wars between the high elves and the dark elves and the urdmordar.

Whatever its origin, the tactic proved brutally effective.

A rain of two hundred heavy javelins fell into the medvarth warriors, and the tight-packed medvarth had no chance to dodge. Scores of the warriors perished as the iron javelins punched through their armor and into their torsos, the heavy bladed heads driving through armor and flesh. Scores more were wounded. The Anathgrimm flung another volley of javelins, sending a rain of iron into the medvarth. This time, the enemy was prepared and managed to get their shields up, though more medvarth were killed and wounded.

Go! shouted Ridmark, but the Anathgrimm knew their business. The warriors behind him split into two groups, one group heading towards the base of the hill, the others running towards the end of the defile further up the slope. The medvarth were trapped in the defile, and if all went well, the Anathgrimm could encircle them, driving the medvarth to enraged fury, causing the creatures to turn upon each other in their frenzy.

Or they would charge through the Anathgrimm and break free.

Ridmark dropped his bow, drawing his staff from over his shoulder. The length of black

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