Blood-crazed Sutherners were swarming towards him. Roper drew his sword in anger for the very first time and hacked down. There was a ring of metal on metal and a juddering shockwave ran up Roper’s arm. He struck wildly once, twice, three times; his eyes always on the body of his father which had now been dragged into the heart of the Suthern mass. Men drew wicked knives and converged on the body to claim the rich prize: a fallen king. The Black Lord was dead and his son was dying.
Roper was spraying vile curses at the men between him and his father, trying to drive his horse onwards. A hand seized his boot and dragged him from the saddle. He crashed into the flood waters and for a moment could neither see nor hear as he was engulfed. There was an awful, puncturing sensation in his thigh and he knew he had been stabbed. Panic lent him strength and he thrashed to the surface, finding his sword still in his hand and sweeping it from the water. He was pinned to the ground by a spear thrust into his leg but he could still swing his sword and aimed it wildly at the Sutherners who surrounded him, blocking attacks as best he could. One lunge made it through and smashed into his head, where it opened a gash to the bone but went no further. Whilst Roper’s head was ringing, his vision a clouded white, another thrust hit his chest, puncturing his plate and through to his bone-armour where, again, it was stopped.
Roper had no idea of it but he was screaming; a vile shriek of distress and ferocity as his sword flailed through the air, seeking to strike back at someone. He was alone in these waters, which were steadily turning pink with his own blood. He could barely see the sky, the view blocked by lunging Suthern bodies. There was no noise at all; he was enslaved by the overwhelming instinct to keep himself alive for a few seconds more.
An improbable freedom had descended upon him. His self-doubt was gone, his mind wiped clean for one great, dynamic effort. His vision, which no longer felt like vision in the ordinary sense, had become tunnel-like and responded to motion alone. He could not think, he had no control; Roper was stripped to his core. He was a cornered wildcat. There was nothing in him beyond his hauling lungs and swinging blade. Dark shapes were pressing in on his prone form.
And then there was a break in the wall of flesh which surrounded him. The light of the grey skies poured down on Roper.
A dead Sutherner had crashed into the waters at his feet in a spray of blood and there was a shout of alarm. A flash of light carved through another two Sutherners who were hurled backwards and an enormous shadow stepped into the gap they had left. The figure raised its great light blade again and sparks sprang away from it as it swept along a Suthern weapon, taking the top of a man’s skull off as if it were an apple. Like rows of wheat, the Sutherners were falling before this harvester until Roper’s final two attackers fled, splashing away through the waters.
A hand seized Roper’s collar and dragged him up and out. Roper screamed again as the spear was ripped from his flesh but his rescuer took no notice, hauling him from the scene. The shock almost made Roper drop his sword, but his groping fingers managed to just clutch the pommel as he was hauled away. “My lord father!” he roared as he was dragged back. “The Black Lord! He’s there! Get him!”
More hands seized Roper and Anakim swarmed around him, flooding between him and the Suthern ranks. “Release me!” he shouted. It was the Sacred Guard. The finest fighting unit in the world had arrived, honour-bound to preserve the blood that surged through Roper.
Roper received as little mercy from their treatment as had the Sutherners. His protestations were ignored as he was dragged from the front line and violence erupted all about him. He was allowed to collapse at last, dazed and bleeding, into the waters forty yards from the melee. His eyes focused on the man who had held his collar and who had surely rescued him from death. It was a Blackstone, though Roper did not know his name. He demanded it of the man.
“Helmec, my lord.”
The words “my lord” jarred with Roper, though he could not have said why. “I’ll make a guardsman of you, Helmec.”
Helmec stared. Enough sense was returning to Roper for him to be able to take in some of the man’s face. He must have been young, but it was difficult to tell beneath a mask of scars. One of his cheeks was so shredded that the interior of his mouth was visible through the old wounds. He held himself with the demeanour of a veteran: weary and assured, though there had been no weariness in his defence of Roper. “My lord …”
There it was again. Lord.
Men were gathering around Roper like lost sheep, though seemingly not daring to ask anything of him. A vague sense of responsibility began to press against him.
“A horse,” murmured Roper. Perhaps things would be clearer on horseback. One was brought to him and when he could not mount on his savaged leg, Helmec was there again to help him into the saddle. “Obliged,” he muttered, turning the horse towards where the Sacred Guard had turned the flood waters a boiling red.
Uvoren was in the thick of the fighting, Marrow-Hunter in hand. Roper watched him take a great overhead swing at a Sutherner, dismissing the feeble block raised against him and flattening his opponent. The rest of the Sacred Guard were shredding the lightly armoured longbowmen they faced, but outside this martial mismatch the Anakim were in dire trouble. The Blackstone Legion appeared to have dissolved into the flooding
