Last Life

Book 7: Chapter 16

Bergonia

Near the banks of the Miroir River

Forward deployment position of the Duke di Spinola’s army

“I’VE GOT A SACK OF GOLD for whoever brings me the bastard’s head!” Prince Adrian shouted loudly, just before the mass of heavy cavalry jolted itself into a furious charge.

His words rippled down the ranks of his riders, and a shout of joy erupted from 3,000 throats.

The Duke di Spinola just frowned angrily; even in this, the Prince had once again managed to mess everything up. Many of the riders would now be thinking first and foremost about how to reach the insolent de Gramont bastard and get their hands on this rich reward.

A sack of gold — even a relatively small one — was a prize well worth the considerable risk involved. It could make a significant difference in the personal fortune not only of a simple knight, but even that of a Count. And apparently, nobody seemed to care that the bastard was a stryker.

Not just any old stryker, either. He was an avant. Duke Fernando di Spinola had learned about the bastard’s rank from the Elder Priest of the Order of the Scarlet Shield, Brother Enrico. As it happens, he had heard about it right as a huge unit of Scarlets was about to leave the Golden Lion’s army, together with the Stone Knights. They were headed back to Atalia. Back, as the Duke di Spinola later realized, to lick their wounds for a while.

It turned out that the little upstart had seriously thinned the notorious Order’s ranks, and that Brother Enrico had received an order from the Scarlet Temple instructing him to bring four cohorts of men back with him to prevent the Scarlets from being left without any army at all.

Prior to leaving (and without going into the details), the priest had hinted to the Duke that this new Margrave de Valier wasn’t at all the man he made himself out to be. That he was almost a demon in human form.

Very wisely, the Duke didn’t venture to ask why, in that case, the priest and his brothers were heading back to Atalia with their tails between their legs instead of annihilating this demon.

The last thing he needed was to make an enemy of the all-powerful Order that controlled the entire country. True, in his heart of hearts di Spinola had never really been a fan of the Order, and he had always secretly delighted in seeing the fanatics defeated (so much so that he himself was often surprised by the intensity of his delight). As an experienced courtier, he understood very well that a weaker Order would allow other political forces to raise their heads in Atalia.

Duke Ricardo di Lorenzo, for example: the man commonly known as the Golden Lion, who was already gathering a party around himself. Sure, there had always been some friction between the line of the di Spinola and the line of the di Lorenzo, but the prospect of them becoming allies in the future was definitely on the table. That, after all, was the very life and breath of politics — severing old ties that had outlived their usefulness in order to secure new ones.

All that remained was for the Duke to avenge his son and select an heir from among his massive brood of nephews. Unlike the Duchess di Spinola, the Duke’s younger sister’s marriage had proven fertile in the extreme.

Besides that fact that his enemy had turned out to be quite different than the Duke di Spinola had imagined, though, his plan for vengeance was also mightily complicated by the presence of Prince Adrian.

As the Duke had already realized, Alfonso V’s eldest son had been driving the Golden Lion insane, and the commander had taken the first opportunity to get rid of him. His solution, you might say, had been to transfer his headache to someone else.

Shielded by his much-exaggerated friendship with the late Hugo, Prince Adrian had immediately delegated the task of supplying and feeding his considerable entourage to the Duke without so much as a pang of conscience. And so, in addition to his own army and the legion from the Golden Lion, Fernando di Spinola also had to feed 200 of the Prince’s useless hangers-on, which was costing him a considerable sum of money.

As for his enemy... The Duke himself had initiated the negotiations, and just as he’d hoped, they gave him an opportunity to become fully convinced that the Elder Priest was right. Not that the young Margrave de Valier was some sort of demon — not in the literal sense, at least. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, though, he was a dangerous, cold-blooded killer. And a cunning strategist to boot. The way he was making use of the situation developing in front of them certainly spoke volumes about his abilities in that regard. Thankfully, neither the Duke nor the Count di Milatto (commanding the legion) had taken the bait.

The same couldn’t be said of the Prince, however, who was positively boiling with rage. He had summoned his knights and ordered them into battle — more specifically, he had ordered them to “stomp these criminals into the mud, and then quarter their bastard leader and pour molten pitch into his insolent mouth.”

So when, instead of the cavalry, it ended up being the legionaries who were ordered to attack the enemy first, the Prince lost his temper entirely and called the Duke di Spinola and Count di Milatto cowards in front of their assembled command staff. And, as sad as the Duke was to admit it, he had started to notice bewilderment and confusion about his actions even in the eyes of his oldest and most devoted comrades. Basically, they were all in agreement with the Prince. Every one of them had come with their vassals, hoping — like di Spinola himself — for the opportunity to avenge their fallen offspring.

“Are we really going to let the common masses steal the victory right from under our noses?!” Prince Armor shouted loudly from the back of his white charger as he hurtled past the assembled ranks of his riders, his golden armor flashing in the sun. Everyone understood perfectly well that he was referring to the Golden Lion’s legionaries. “Are the glorious and valiant knights of Atalia going to wait quietly while their glory is stolen by a bunch of peasants?!”

This remark from the Prince turned out to be the last straw for the Duke. He felt that he had run out of options — he gave the order to attack. Gone was their original idea of luring the Vestonians gradually out from behind their fortifications — of getting them out into the open field.

The horn of battle let out one more long, vicious blast, and a 3,000-strong tidal wave of horseflesh surged forward to follow the Prince, picking up speed rapidly as it did so.

As the commander-in-chief, the Duke didn’t take part in the attack himself; neither, for the same reason, did the Count di Milatto. Actually, Fernando di Spinola was trying strenuously to avoid eye contact with the Count. He felt a certain sense of guilt with regard to the legion’s commander, because he knew very well what was about to happen. After all, there was almost no way that the cavalrymen would be able (if, indeed, they were willing) to part ranks in order to make way for the legionaries retreating along their path. As a consequence, many of those infantrymen were bound to die that day beneath the hooves of their own countrymen’s horses.

The disgraced Rivlians were another matter: their bolts had failed even to reach the Vestonian line, not once but twice, so the Duke didn’t really feel much pity for them. Fernando knew he would have to sit down for talks with their captains; after all, they had already presented him with a huge bill for hiring their crossbowmen, who in the event had turned out to be utterly useless.

The Duke still had a hundred riders and 200 infantrymen in reserve. That said, everyone understood that the Vestonian defeat was imminent, and the reserve probably wouldn’t be needed at all.

Fernando di Spinola felt tense as he watched the cavalry attack. The graceful, powerful horses charged forward, carrying Northern Atalia’s best knights into battle on their backs.

Their armor glittered in the sun, their colorful banners and ornate feathers rippled in the wind, and the earth beneath them shook as if from a protracted earthquake. The spellbinding sight created an overall impression of unbelievable superiority, grandeur, and strength.

At that moment, the Duke felt genuinely proud of his fellow countrymen. It seemed that no opponent in the world could possibly withstand such an onslaught. The thunder of hooves and the roar of hundreds of simultaneous shouts of excitement mingled together into a single, cacophonous roar.

For just a moment, the Duke was so carried away by his emotions that he was prepared to forgive Prince Adrian his immature, headstrong stunts. The young man was hurtling forward at the very head of the assault, like a golden spearhead flying through the air toward its target.

Fernando wanted to scream “FORWARD!” as a sea of emotions washed over him. His hands were shaking with excitement; his heart felt like it might burst out of his chest. If it weren’t for the burden of command, he would have given anything to be there with the Prince in the front ranks! To fly forward with his spear at the ready. To see the animal horror on the faces of his enemies. To feel his spear tear through someone’s body. To breathe in the heady smell of a slain enemy’s blood.

Finally, the first riders reached the ranks of the retreating legionaries, who immediately started trying to duck and weave between the gaps in the oncoming cavalry battalions.

The Duke cast a quick glance at the Count di Milatto, whose face had darkened as he watched his men dying beneath the hooves of the northern knights. Thankfully, there were far fewer losses than the Duke di Spinola had originally feared.

But alas — the retreating infantry significantly slowed the momentum of the cavalry charge as it passed over and around them. The situation was further complicated by the numerous sewage-filled canals that the Vestonians had dug all over the place like a pack of moles. With his jaw clenched tight, the Duke watched as many of the horses hurtled full-speed into the devious traps, whereupon their riders were thrown from their saddles into the black muck that filled the ditches.

In an instant, the epic feel of the moment was gone. Soldiers splashing and squelching as they tried to escape the thick, black, sewage-filled muck; the desperate whinnying of wounded horses; the cries of the wounded, intermingled with those of the enemy archers who were moving rapidly forward — as if by the wave of a magic wand, a picture suddenly appeared in the Duke’s mind. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

What he saw, however, went far beyond all those expectations. He noticed that the enemy archers were preparing to let off a volley — this time, they were firing flaming arrows. Like a cornered rabbit, the old Duke’s heart suddenly froze.

Eyes wide with horror, he watched as a hail of almost 2,000 Mertonian arrows slammed down onto his knights in a single, simultaneous wave of fire. The black muck that he had taken to be sewage turned out to be crude oil. As soon as the arrows hit it, the muck exploded into flames. It resembled some primordial, elemental monster that started devouring his men.

Everyone suffered — infantry as well as cavalry. The fire leapt up into the air in a solid wall until it was towering over the heads of the attacking army. Until the end of his days, Fernando would never forget the sound of its roar, intermingled as it was with the shrieks of dying men and animals.

After a little while, the fire began to lose its strength pretty quickly; it fell away, and when it did the Duke (who was still stupefied with horror) managed to get a look at the battle beyond it. It turned out that most of the riders had actually managed to make it to the Vestonian positions, where a fierce battle was raging. True, the effect was nothing like the unstoppably-powerful avalanche of horses and men that Fernando had originally envisioned.

To his own surprise, Fernando suddenly realized that he was facing a well-trained army. He and his commanders had frequently referred to them as a rabble, but he could now see that they were nothing of the kind. The Vestonians had been prepared for his attack. They had maintained a rigid formation, with long pikes held out in front of them, and as a result the Atalian cavalry slammed into a formidable wall of steel.

The Duke could see his cavalrymen start to lose their formational coherence, and the knights began to retreat as they realized that they simply weren’t going to be able to hammer their way through the wall of pikes. Yet again, the Duke’s heart froze inside his chest. This wasn’t at all the battle he had expected.

And then, as he watched, breaches began to open in the Vestonian lines. Numerous groups of extremely-fast warriors started rushing out from within them.

As soon as di Spinola heard the first long, baleful wolf’s howl, the truth dawned on him. Shapeshifters... Dozens... Hundreds... They were throwing themselves onto the backs of the retreating knights and knocking them to the ground. The air was filled with agonized screams, the groan of steel being torn apart, the shrieking of terrified horses, the growling of beasts — and eventually, the chorus of a pack of werewolves howling in triumph.

The Duke shook his head, throwing off his horrified stupor. He looked around at the men in his reserve, and then issued a simple command in a dull, slightly hoarse shout:

“To battle!”

As his horsemen began to form up into a single, disciplined battalion, and his infantry closed ranks behind a wall of shields and spears for what most of them realized would be their last march, the Duke di Spinola heard the mournful wail of a horn, this time from the enemy’s side of the field. A few seconds later, another horn blasted out a response; this time, however, the sound came from somewhere off to the Duke’s left, from the direction of a small stretch of forest.

The Duke turned his head toward the sound, and suddenly the color left his face. Horsemen had started trotting out of the forest. A hundred... Two... Three... Banners began to unfurl into the air above the soldiers’ heads, and the Duke recognized one of them immediately. It was the Viscount de Leval’s personal standard. The Duke had a nearly identical standard (except that it had belonged to the Count, not the Viscount) lying in one of his wagons full of trophies, not much more than a mile away from the battlefield. Along with them, he had several captive Vestonian noblemen awaiting their fate, including the Count de Leval and the dying Marshal de Clairmont.

“To battle!” The Duke di Spinola repeated his order in a voice that was even shakier than before; this time, however, he was pointing his sword toward the Vestonian cavalry who had just emerged from within the forest.

A few moments later, the two masses of cavalry dug their spurs into their horses’ sides, swung their spears forward, and raced into a violent head-on confrontation. The Duke di Spinola, protected on two sides by his bodyguards, was at the very front of his men.

A heavily-armed knight with an unfamiliar sigil on his breastplate was charging straight toward him. At that moment, Fernando di Spinola felt the familiar (though long-forgotten) wave of anticipation that often passes across the body just before a fight to the death. The world around him disappeared. As did all the noise. The Duke could hear nothing except for the sound of his own breathing and the beating of his own heart. He was one with the charger beneath him. They functioned almost as a single organism.

An instant passed... The Duke rose slightly in his stirrups and leaned forward a little bit... In the instant before the blow, Fernando di Spinola saw the unfamiliar knight change the position of his shield ever so slightly, with the result that the Duke’s spearhead landed no more than a grazing blow along its surface. Despite that, however, the Vestonian lurched in his saddle, although he didn’t fall.

That was the last thing the Duke saw. A vicious blow knocked him from his own saddle. Then came another monstrous impact (this time apparently from his heavily-armored body slamming to the ground), followed by an all-consuming wave of pain. Consciousness left the Duke di Spinola’s eyes.

The first thing Fernando saw when he opened his eyes again was a blurry, vaguely-familiar face. The bright sunlight in his eyes made it hard to discern any details.

The Duke squirmed slightly, which immediately sent a dull pain rippling through his chest and back.

“Try not to move, Your Grace,” said a calm, even voice that also seemed slightly familiar. The voice was speaking Atalian, but with a Vestonian accent. “You broke a couple ribs, as well as your right leg and your left arm.”

“Who are you?” The Duke croaked. “Where am I?”

“I’m Maximillian de Valier, and this is my army’s camp. And you, Your Grace, have been my prisoner for a little while now.”

“And His Highness?” The Duke asked as he grimaced in pain.

“Oh!” The hateful bastard chuckled. “Prince Adrian is alive and unharmed. Unlike you and your men, His Highness made it out of the fight with little more than a scare. He was in such a hurry to punish my insolence that he didn’t even notice the ditch in his horse’s path. And that’s where we found him... Unconscious.”

“How many of my soldiers died?” The Duke asked hoarsely.

“A lot,” replied the bastard. “Quite a lot.”

Fernando gritted his teeth angrily.

“You have no one to blame but yourselves,” the Margrave shrugged. “Your order to massacre the legionaries of the Marshal de Clairmont and the Count de Leval made my people pretty upset. Many of them lost friends and loved ones.”

“That was my answer to the death of my son and his men,” the Duke hissed through gritted teeth.

“War is one of the worst products the human mind has ever produced,” the Margrave shrugged once again. “As for your son, he fought bravely. Several horses were killed beneath him. I ordered him and his entourage buried separately and with all the honors due to noblemen of their respective ranks.”

At this, Fernando twitched and turned to stare firmly into the Margrave’s face. He really wanted to believe what the young man had just said.

“By the way — I hope you weren’t too offended by what I said about your son during our negotiations earlier?” The Margrave asked with a wry smile. “You must understand — that was a small piece of strategic deception. I needed to get you and your men as angry as possible. Although judging by your decision to attack with your infantry first, you managed not to succumb to my provocation. Heh heh... I thought so. I can see it in your eyes. The Prince ruined everything. Am I wrong? You had the misfortune of having His Highness decide to join your army. He’s still too young and inexperienced.”

The Duke di Spinola was still staring attentively into the smiling Margrave’s face. In any other situation, perhaps, he would have ridiculed such a statement. After all, the Margrave himself was much younger than Prince Adrian. The ice-cold look in those predatory eyes, however, made the Duke feel profoundly uncomfortable, and certainly dissuaded him from disputing the wisdom of what the Margrave had just said.

“Okay,” the young man sighed. “Enough talk. You need rest.”

He was about to leave, but the Duke stopped him.

“Monsieur,” he asked hopefully. “Where is my son’s grave?”

“I’ll explain everything in detail later, Your Grace,” replied the Margrave. “Not only that, but I’m also willing to return all his personal effects and his armor to you, along with his banner. For a modest price, of course. Same goes for the banners and goods from his comrades, too. And as for THIS campaign... Oh, it’s going to ruin you, Your Grace. Bidding farewell to me is going to cost you and your vassals a huge ransom. Although admittedly, none of that will actually happen until a peace treaty is signed between our respective Kings.”

“I understand,” said the Duke, who was obviously adding up his losses in his mind.

To get the hard cash required, he would have no choice but to turn to the Scarlets and their bank. First, though, he would have to find out whether his herald was still alive. He was the only man who could be entrusted with so important a mission.

“My herald,” said the Duke. “Baron di Valio. Is he alive?”

“I don’t know,” the Margrave shrugged in reply. “If you’re intending to send your herald to get the money, though, I have to point out what a bad idea that is. Simply because the process will take years, and I have no intention of keeping you and your court as prisoners for that long. Heh heh... You’d bankrupt me before I had a chance to bankrupt you.”

“Then how do you intend to get the ransom money?” The confused Duke inquired.

“You’ll go get it yourself,” the Margrave shrugged yet again. “First, though, you’ll give me your word as a nobleman that you’ll come back with the ransom as soon as you possibly can. Meanwhile, your people will remain with me as my guests.”

With that, the Margrave bent down above the Duke, and in a quiet but insistent voice he said:

“Enough talk now, Your Grace. You need sleep...”

As the strange Margrave’s warm palm pressed against his forehead, Fernando felt a wave of warmth pass through his body. Then, suddenly, everything went dark...