Orson had grown up in a rural speck of Caedia, just a few days ride from the Wncari Hills. That was far enough that he’d never been there, but he heard many tales of the hill barbarians. Caedian common folk kept out of the hills for fear of being waylaid or slain. The nobility did the same, unless they were looking for glory or to expand their borders. Then they ventured in with a retinue of knights and soldiers, men that spilled their blood at the pleasure of their liege.
“Always be thankful that we live as free folk,” his mother used to tell him. He hadn’t known his father. They’d lived far enough from Lord Brooker’s lands that they escaped his notice, but close enough that his serfs came to Orson’s mother for remedies and midwifery.
Orson had never feared the Wncar as a boy. He knew he would never be conscripted by Lord Brooker to fight them, of course, but it was more than that.
“The Wncar are free, like us,” his mother would say. “They live off the land as they always have, bowing to no man. They know many more old charms and remedies than I do.”
She once told him that she was half Wncari herself, or maybe quarter. That made Orson and the hillfolk kin, after a fashion. He’d never felt a call to seek out that bit of his heritage. He’d never even crossed the Hills themselves before. But he’d always thought he might do so one day. He’d imagined that if he chanced across the Wncari themselves, he could explain to them that he had no quarrel with them. Respected them, even. Perhaps he could learn a bit more herb-lore from one of their wise men. Druids, his mother said they were called.
An idle dream.
The first Wncar Orson had ever seen now lay dying at his feet. The man had burst from the trees, howling a battlecry. He was mostly naked, wearing nothing but an iron helm, boots, and a belt from which hung a second axe. Orson had heard rumors than some of the oldest Wncari clans went into battle garbed only in blue woad, but he hadn’t quite believed it. And yet the dying man was indeed tattooed with many strange symbols, with several more painted on with fresh dye.
Mother once said the woad carried protective magic, Orson recalled. That they had no need of armor. That much, at least, was wrong.
The Wncar choked on blood as Orson struggled to extract his sword from the man’s chest. The blade had caught on one of his ribs, but Orson finally tore the iron free with a heavy yank. The Wncar whimpered and then fell silent.
So much blood.
Orson had been distracted too long. He turned to assess his situation, and found Cam standing nearby, axe and shield raised. Levin was still mounted, circling the field, riding from foe to foe.
The Wncari were all around them. Many of them were barely clothed—just bits of iron or hardened leather. Helms, vambraces, a few breastplates. They were adorned in woad tattoos and woad paint. The paint in particular seemed to share a common style: five stark handprints slapped across their bodies in no particular pattern.
The woad fighters screamed their battlecries and charged right into Steelshod’s ranks wherever they could. Deeper in the trees, Orson could see other Wncari that seemed to wear more roughspun clothes. These were mostly armed with bows, and they fired indiscriminately into the melee. At least one of the woadmen went down with an Wncari arrow in his back.
Yorrin, Prudence, Conrad, and Robin all suddenly burst through the trees and set upon the archers. It seemed they’d circled around and approached from a sideways angle, and the bowmen were caught off guard by the sudden melee.
Orson also saw, on the opposite side of the road, three hulking men in mail that he immediately recognized as Svardic warriors. One of them was still shouting out a chant in his native tongue, while the other two stood guard in front of him. Gunnar was fighting with the two guards, and he looked to be hard-pressed by their attacks. Orson took a step towards them when one of the woadmen suddenly charged towards him.
The Wncari warrior brandished a spear in his clenched fists. A long knife hung from his belt, and hardened leather bracers protected his forearms. He jabbed at Orson, snarling in a foreign tongue. Orson scrambled to defend himself, and felt his left arm jolt as the impacts of the spear resounded against his shield.
Orson tried to counterattack, but the Wncar batted the blade aside with his protected left forearm. He jabbed again, this time going low, and Orson failed to get his shield out in time. Orson grunted as he felt the impact of the spear against his thigh, but his mail hauberk caught the thrust. It did not pierce his armor or his flesh, but it still hurt fiercely.
You’ll live, Orson told himself. Focus!
He lashed out with his sword, and again the woadman went to deflect it with his arm. This time, Orson also attacked with his shield. Even as his sword was parried, he slammed the iron-rimmed edge of his shield into the Wncar’s face. The man’s nose erupted in a fountain of blood, and he reeled. Before he could recover, Orson lunged in again with his sword. He stuck it through the man’s belly. It went in deep and it went in easy, and when he pulled his sword out it was followed by a slithering mass of red.
The woadman died in the dirt, and Orson looked back towards Gunnar. Steelshod’s newest recruit was not in such dire straits as Orson had feared. Aleksandr had ridden in to help, using his height from horseback and the long reach of his huge sword to control the Svards.
One of the reavers already lay in a broken heap on the ground, and the remaining Svard—alongside the one that had been chanting—was now desperately fighting for his life against Gunnar and Aleksandr. Orson caught his breath and looked around the road again, trying to see where he might be most useful.
A mighty roar drew his eye back towards the largest wagons, where most of the woadmen were pressing his closest companions. A man emerged from the trees. He was huge, a head taller than Dylan and wider than Bear. His body was adorned with more woad tattoos than any of the others, many of them so old they were faded a pale blue. He wore iron bracers on his forearms and an iron helm, but nothing else—not even shoes. He carried a huge double-bitted axe, with long bearded heads. It was impractically large, but he swung it effortlessly as he crashed into Orson’s allies.
The other Wncari warriors in woad seemed to organize around the big man. After rallying for a moment, they clashed with the wagon’s defenders: Bear, Nathan, and Perrin all stood on foot in a disjointed line. Dylan was still mounted, but he got stuck in with them in the chaos of the melee.
Levin was indisposed with a foe of his own, but Anatoly wheeled his horse from the caravan’s flank and rode to join the fight. Cam jogged towards this new threat as well, and Orson followed.
We let ourselves get too scattered, Orson realized angrily. The woadmen pressed the wagons fiercely, further breaking up the already ragged line Bear, Perrin, and Nathan had been trying to form. The big man strode past them, sweeping wildly with his axe to keep them back, and he moved straight for Dylan.
Dylan jabbed at him with his spear, but the huge woadman laughed as the iron tip of the spear grazed his shoulder and opened a thin cut. He swung his axe in a mighty blow, smashing into the shoulder of Dylan’s horse. The animal screamed as it went down. He raised his axe again, and none of the others were able to break free of their own fights to help.
Orson watched as he brought down his axe towards Dylan. Too far to do anything but shout in horror.
A second horse crashed into the woadman from the side. Shockingly, the huge Wncar did not lose his footing, but his blow was fouled. He turned, shouldering into the horse and jabbing his axe up into its rider.
Anatoly was knocked out of the saddle by the thrust, though the axe lacked a spike to cause real damage from such a blow. Still, it did the trick. Anatoly’s horse wheeled, stunned and spooked by being struck and losing its rider. Anatoly scrambled in the dirt for his fallen spear, and when that failed he tried to draw his sword.
The big woadman advanced on the prone Ruskan, laughing. Anatoly yanked his sword from its sheath and lurched to his feet, slashing wildly. They exchanged blows in a brief flurry. The woadman bled from several lacerations, but he kept Anatoly on the backfoot, driving him away from the wagons and into the underbrush.
“Anatoly!” Dylan shouted, struggling to rise from where he’d been pinned by his dying horse. “Stay close!”
He can’t, Orson saw. Couldn’t even if he wanted to. He needs help.
Orson saw Cam, ten steps ahead of him, reach the fighting. He went for Anatoly but was immediately caught up in the melee as one of the other Wncar rushed him.
Orson tried to take a wider route, circling into the thick foliage. He saw Anatoly make a warding thrust, keeping his huge foe at bay as he backpedaled.
Then he stumbled.
Anatoly only looked down for a heartbeat. That was all it took. Orson watched as the woadman raised his huge axe and brought it down on Anatoly’s head. Anatoly wore simple helm, and the iron crumpled under the impact. Blood erupted from Anatoly’s face, and he collapsed onto the ground.
Someone screamed. That’s me, Orson realized. He screamed in shock and horror and rage, and the next thing he knew he was charging the huge Wncari warrior. On some level, he knew he was likely charging to his death. On some level, he wondered why he would do that for a man he had only known a short time. A man that had fought and killed some of Orson’s comrades when they first met.
But these realizations were fleeting. Mostly what occupied his mind was focus. Clear, stark focus. Anatoly was down. If anyone could stop the bleeding, if anyone could save his life, Orson was the one. That was why Aleksandr had hired him on. And the woadman stood between Orson and his task.
The woadman heard him charging through the thicket. He turned to face him, grinning widely. He raised his axe and shouted something in his native tongue.
Seconds before Orson reached him, they both heard a new sound. A shout of bestial fury. Orson and the woadman both paused, and they both turned to see the source of the shouting.
Bear hit the woadman like a battering ram.
It took Orson several moments to understand what had happened. A path had been carved through the Wncari ranks, and the other Steelshod were penning the survivors in. Bear alone had smashed through them, and now he smashed into the biggest of the woadmen.
Bear was not as tall as his foe, nor was his axe as large. It didn’t seem to matter in the slightest. His axe rose and fell so fast Orson could barely see it. The woadman seemed to follow it no better. He swung his axe wildly, trying to drive Bear back, but Bear took the swing on his side and did not seem to even flinch. His axe came down on one of the woadman’s iron bracers, denting with a crunching sound.
The woadman grunted, lost his axe. Bear’s axe came down again, at the elbow, and the woadman lost his forearm. Bear’s axe came down again, into the woadman’s chest. Pulpy gore and shattered fragments of his ribs burst forth.
“No!” Bear snarled. “No! You die! Tarakov man is mine! Not yours! You die!”
Bear’s axe rose and fell. Orson skirted around the butchery, and dropped to the ground at Anatoly’s side.
His fingers found Anatoly’s throat, and he felt the thrum of blood pumping fast. He still lives, for now at least.
Orson unslung the satchel of healer’s tools he kept hanging at his side. Some he had always carried, but many of them had been a gift from Alaina before he left Yerevan.
“I can always get more,” she had said. “You’re likely to need them more than I. Keep them safe, Orson.”
Orson swallowed a nervous lump in his throat. I’ll try, priestess.
He had to work quickly. He pulled the mangled helm from Anatoly’s head, and blood gushed from a deep wound in the scalp. Orson held a pad of cloth to the wound to stanch the bleeding.
Heads bleed, he reminded himself. A devilish amount. Have faith, keep up the pressure, and it will stop before it kills him.
Bleeding out was not the greatest danger with a wound like the one Anatoly had suffered. A fierce blow to the head could bruise the brain, cause the humors inside the skull to go bad. It was a chancy business at the best of times. Orson had never treated such a wound, though he knew a little about it. In theory, at least.
“Does he live?”
The voice broke Orson’s concentration. He realized that Aleksandr was standing over them. He looked down with an expression of deep concern.
“So far, yes,” Orson said.
He spared a quick glance behind Aleksandr. The road was in total disarray, scattered with at least a dozen corpses. He saw the figures of the other members of Steelshod moving about. Bear was standing over a bloody pile of meat, axe in hand, panting.
“Is anyone…?” Orson could not bring himself to say the words.
“No,” Aleksandr said. “Many wounded, da. But we all live. The enemy is dead or fled. Stay with him. Do you think…” It was Aleksandr’s turn to trail off, but he showed more courage than Orson when he forged ahead to say the words. “Is he likely to die, still?”
“I’m not sure,” Orson admitted. He did not let up the pressure to Anatoly’s wounded scalp. “I think—the bleeding is bad, but I think I can stop it.”
“That is good,” Aleksandr said.
“Eh,” Orson shrugged his shoulders without moving his hands. “It is what it is. It’s—it’s bad, Aleksandr. And even if the bleeding stops… it isn’t over.”
Orson frowned. Aleksandr watched in silence. Finally, Orson spoke again.
“If anything, once I stop the bleeding… that’s when the real work begins.”