Everyone but him seemed to know where to go. Soldiers to the left fanned out to the left, those to the right went right. Alun couldn’t see any sign of battle, but he heard cries in the mist all around him.
He hesitated.
“Out of the way!” a soldier shouted, shoving him aside.
A black arrow whizzed out of the fog, plunked into the neck of a fellow behind. Alun whirled, saw the man stagger back in shock, pull the arrow free. Blood gushed from the wound, but it wasn’t much, and he looked at Alun and laughed, “I’ll be all right.” A second arrow plunged into the man’s chest.
Alun decided that it was safer to be anywhere but here.
A huge warrior went charging past him, shouting a battle cry and bearing an ax in either hand, and Alun decided: I want to be behind that monster!
He gave chase, and soon he saw the warrior, tearing through a dark doorway ahead, his arms swinging like mad. A pair of wyrmlings blocked his way. They were larger than the human warrior, but they fell back before the onslaught, and Alun went racing into the building.
His warrior was ahead, across the room, doing battle at another doorway.
The dead littered the floor all around, both human and wyrmling. Apparently the wyrmlings had fought to secure the doorway, and the battle had gone back and forth. Alun glanced behind him, afraid that Connor or Drewish might have followed.
Someone cried, “Help!” and Alun peered into the shadows. A man was down, blood gushing from a wound to his chest. Alun moved to give aid.
He heard a growl, saw a wyrmling commander trying groggily to rise up from the heap on hands and knees, his black armor slick with blood. He was reaching for a small pouch tied to his war belt. His helm was cracked, and he had a deep wound to the scalp.
Not deep enough, Alun thought, and buried the pick end of his ax in it.
The wyrmling collapsed, still clutching his pouch.
Curious, Alun reached down, drew the pouch from the wyrmling’s dead hand.
Perhaps there is some treasure here, he thought, imagining golden rings or amulets.
But when he opened the pouch, he saw only three crude iron spikes, rusty and bent, each about four inches in length.
Alun stared at them in wonder, for they were a treasure greater than gold. They were harvester’s spikes-iron nails encrusted with glandular extracts drawn from those that the wyrmlings had killed. The extracts granted a man tremendous strength and threw him into a bloodlust, at least for awhile.
A warrior came rushing in behind. He must have seen Alun finish off the wyrmling, for he shouted to Alun, “That’s the way lad!” then stopped and peered at the spikes. “A harvester! You killed yourself a harvester. Use ’em up, lad. Good men died to make those.”
The fellow snatched one of the spikes from Alun’s hand, and Alun thought that he was stealing it. He protested, “Hey!” and turned to confront the fellow, just as the man shoved the spike into Alun’s neck, piercing the carotid artery.
And the dried fruit of the harvested glands surged through Alun’s veins.
His first reaction was that his heart began to pump so violently that he feared it would burst. Then his mouth went dry and he felt nauseous as blood was diverted from his stomach to his extremities.
And then the rage came, a rage so hot that it drove all thoughts from his mind. Blood pounded in his ears like the surging of the sea.
He let out a blood-curdling cry, grabbed an extra ax from a fallen comrade, and suddenly found himself charging through a mist of red, leaping over fallen foes, lunging past warriors of the clan.
A wyrmling suddenly appeared before him in a doorway, a huge creature with an ax, his face covered with beastly tattoos, his oversized incisors hanging out like fangs. He wore thick armor and wielded a battle-ax and a shield. Alun felt no fear.
Somehow, in the haze of war, Alun saw a flash, and for an instant it was Drewish that stood before him.
Alun went mad with blood rage.
I am immortal and invincible, Alun thought in a haze, and he leapt high in the air. The wyrmling raised its shield defensively, but the harvester’s spike in Alun’s neck had given him super-human strength. He swung an ax, cleaving the shield in two, striking through, and burying his ax into the wyrmling’s skull.
As Alun’s weight hit the falling monster, Alun saw three more wyrmlings in the shadows behind it.
Good, there are more! he thought, laughing in glee.
And so he fought in a haze of red. The battle was like a dance, him leaping and twisting in the air, swinging his ax.
Some conscious part of his mind warned: Watch your back. They still want you dead!
But that was the last conscious thought that he had.
Sometime later, an hour, two perhaps, he came out of the haze. He was in a room, a barracks, where only the tiniest crack of light shone through a single door.
He still had one ax, though the head had broken off of the other and he held its haft in his hand. He was swinging his good ax into the corpse of a wyrmling, screaming, “Die you cur! Die, you damned pig!”
There were a dozen wyrmlings sprawled on the floor, each of them hacked to pieces.
Several human soldiers were standing in a doorway, peering at him and laughing.
Alun’s heart still raced as if it would explode, and his arm felt so tired that he did not think it would heal in a week. He had a bad gash on his forehead, and blood was flowing down over his eyes. And the other soldiers were laughing at him.
“Here now,” a commanding voice said, “that’s enough of that, lad. You killed ’em already.” The soldiers guffawed.
Alun peered up in shock. It was a captain.
“I killed them?” Alun asked, not believing his ears. But the memories rushed through his mind, ghoulish apparitions.
The captain walked up, pulled the spike from Alun’s neck, and gave him a bandage to staunch the wound.
“You’re lucky-” the captain said, “a little fellow like you, fighting like a harvester.” He held up the bloody spike. “It gives you strength and speed and murderer’s instinct, but it was made for a wyrmling that stands eight feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds. You took a monster’s dose. You’re lucky that your heart didn’t explode.”
Alun suddenly felt weak. The glandular extracts were leaving his body, and it was all that he could do to stand up. He was breathing hard, gasping for breath, and cold sweat dimpled his forehead.
The captain shouted orders to the men, “Clean this place out! Leave no door unopened, no cubby-hole unchecked. Be sure of every enemy. The king wants the heads off of them. Bring them out into the light of day, and throw them in the courtyard.”
So the grisly work began. Alun spent the next fifteen minutes feeling sick, staunching the flow of blood from the gouge in his forehead, wrapping his head up in a bloody bandage, and hacking the head off of a dead wyrmling and lugging it out of doors.
He tried to remember how he had gotten the wound, but could not account for it. He tried to remember where his helmet had come off, but never could find it.
He discovered that the troops had entered a barracks, had caught the wyrmlings sleeping. Many of them did not even have their armor on.
When he was finished, he was a bloody mess, and the captains came through and counted every body, then went out and counted every head.
The king and the warlords came now, admiring the heads stacked in a pile. Connor and Drewish were still there, at the king’s back. Neither of them had bloodied themselves in battle.
Drewish leered at Alun, seeming to enjoy the spectacle of him wounded.
Imagine how he would laugh to see you dead, a little voice whispered in Alun’s mind.
“Two hundred and fifty,” the captain reported to the warlords. “That would be five squadrons, even.”
“And of our own dead?” King Urstone asked.
