Empire of Ashes

Chapter LVII - The Tides of Battle

This one goes to @dounutninja. Thank you for all your votes and comments and welcome to the family :) I'll gonna finally get around to making a new cover sometime this week.

Poor Tem looked torn. He appreciated the brilliance of my idea, but he didn't like the idea of anyone fighting his battles for him, and those two feelings warred openly on his face. His mouth kept twisting between a frown and a grin.

"Come and die," Freedrik was still calling. "Come and die, coward."

It took him a few heartbeats to notice the black stallion at the far edge of the battlefield, pawing at the dirt and dancing back and forth as Anlai leaned on the reins. He wasn't riding his own gelding. He was sat on Nightmare. I understood the logic — the stallion was battle-trained, so he wouldn't shy away from a charge, but he wasn't the most accommodating of mounts, even for Tem.

Freedrik noticed him eventually. He turned and brought his sword point up to bear. There were no more taunts, because the time for talking had passed, and now the two of them would hold a very different sort of conversation. They closed the distance between them at a steady canter — there was no sense charging without spears or shields.

Nightmare and the white stallion stopped alongside each other and danced sideways and back and forth under their riders' direction until they were close enough to exchange blows. Anlai kicked things off with a lazy, off-hand swing, and our army cheered long and loud.

They were evenly matched, and neither seemed able to get the other hand. Freedrik fought defensively — technically flawless but cautious, while Anlai launched a non-stop offensive of total, uncontrolled aggression. He hammered away at his opponent, and Freedrik caught every single blow and turned it aside. There were no openings for either of them.

Both horses were massive, but the white had a slimmer build — more thoroughbred than mountain cob in him. They fought just as fiercely as their riders, lips pulled back and taking chunks out of each other with their teeth. The white didn't use his hooves. He must have been trained that way to let his rider keep his balance. Nightmare, on the other hand, bucked like crazy and took every opportunity to lodge one of his hooves into flesh, and Anlai hardly even seem to notice.

Then things began to turn for the worse. After a particularly vicious kick to the white stallion's hindquarters, Nightmare slipped on the scree and went down on his front knees. He tried to rise once, staggered, and Freedrik landed a punishing downwards cut to Anlai's left shoulder, only narrowly missing his neck. Now the northerner was the one on the defensive, turning blows left, right and centre as the lordling tried to take his head from his shoulders.

Nightmare tried to rise again, this time a colossal effort, eyes bulging and shoulders heaving. He found his feet in a few heartbeats, but he had offered the white an easy shot at his exposed face, and the other stallion took it — and bit off the top half of Nightmare's ear.

That would have sent any other horse running for the hills, but Nightmare was not just any horse. There was blood sheeting down his face, half-blinding him, but he stretched his neck out as far as it would reach and caught Freedrik's boot in his teeth. And then he yanked.

The Anglian lordling had been leaning out of the saddle for his offensive, and he fell headfirst onto the scree, landing hard on his left shoulder. The armour must have done its job because he clambered to his feet in heartbeats, sword raised to ward Anlai off. It wasn't necessary. Anlai threw his leg over Nightmare's neck and joined his opponent on the ground, the message clear — he could afford to fight fair.

Without his rider, the white stallion ran. Nightmare stayed. He charged Freedrik while Anlai looked on. And there wasn't much the Anglian could do: he was knocked to the ground and trampled by two of the four hooves before the stallion was finished. At that point, Nightmare seemed to think his job was done, and wandered back towards our lines, occasionally pausing to snatch a mouthful of grass.