Age of War

Chapter 30

They came face-to-face with their enemy before they even reached The Circle. As they raced around the corner, back into view of the pale daylight filtering through the broken ceiling again, a hairy shape leapt towards them, momentarily blocking out the light. Jonis didn’t get a good look at it, she just lashed out with her sword. There was an animalistic snarl as it fell backwards and a spray of dark blood coated the wall. The thing clutched its misshapen claws to its face, dropping its own weapon, and Tayne struck, ramming her sword through its belly, right up to the hilt. She shook it free and stepped over the carcass without another word. Jonis looked down, seeing the hideous malformed face she’d rent open with its hairy muzzle and long, jagged teeth. Its body was covered in coarse brown hair, but it had walked on two legs like a human and wielded its rusted blade with hands capable of human dexterity, tipped with black claws though they were. Rayke had called them the hyen-a-khan, a race of dogmen he’d encountered in the mainlands. They were savage despoilers, little better than the animals they resembled. They attacked villages, ate any of the inhabitants they killed in the raid, burnt the houses and carried the rest away. Those who fell into their merciless grip could expect a short, brutal life of agony and fear before they too were ripped to pieces by the slavering jaws of these wolfkin.

“Jonis! Come on!” Tayne was at the foot of the stairs that led up to The Circle, and Jonis hurried to join her, finally managing to tear her eyes away from the body of the hyen-a-khan.

“How did they get here?” she asked the militia captain.

“I don’t know. But we’ve both seen what these things are capable of…”

“Right.” It didn’t bear thinking about, but from the sounds up ahead, they were about to get a reminder of the one occasion they’d both come up against the dogmen before.

They ran out of the archway and into The Circle. The air was filled with the sounds of shouts, howls and weapons clashing. There were dozens of hyen-a-khan rampaging across the broken flagstones. They didn’t advance in good order, but instead threw themselves into the fray like a pack of wolves going in for the kill. They had a kind of animal cunning though; enough to try encircling a foe, or drawing off the weaker targets. Some even had bows, though they were poor shots. Arrows arced through the air and more often than not clattered harmlessly to the ground. From their vantage, Jonis saw there were three main knots of fighting: not far from the chambers in which they’d camped, one squad of militia led by Calas were firing continuous volleys of arrows into the charging dogmen. Most found their mark and the floor was already littered with dead. One militiaman was lying motionless to one side though, a barbed arrow sticking out of his back. They were holding off the enemy well enough, but surely they’d run out of ammunition soon.

“I think we’ve found out where they’re coming from,” Tayne said, pointing upwards with her bloody sword.

Jonis followed her gaze and saw what she meant. Through the hole in the domed roof, dogmen were leaping into the battle. It was a long way down and while some were able to flip in midair and land neatly on their feet, others weren’t so lucky, crashing into the ground and not rising afterwards. Some merely landed awkwardly or stumbled, but these were crushed by those who came after them. They showed no regard for their losses, but continued to spill through the ragged gap high above. Most made their way towards the second militia squad who had abandoned bows in favour of forming a rudimentary phalanx, speartips thrust outwards towards their attackers. With fewer than ten soldiers though, there was little chance the formation could hold against such overwhelming odds.

The third clash she couldn’t see, except indirectly. Dogmen surged towards the pit at the centre of The Circle, and from within came the sounds of some desperate battle. Jonis was undecided for a moment, but then she ran towards the lip of the stepped amphitheatre. Tayne was close behind her. On the way, a dogman leapt up to bar their path, but Jonis dispatched it swiftly with an almost offhand swipe of her curved sword. Individually, the hyen-a-khan were not especially formidable – it was when they came in a great pack like this that the danger became all too real. As Jonis reached the edge of the pit, she saw a sight that left her open-mouthed with astonishment. Atlasian soldiers lay dead at the bottom, their blood staining the snow bright red. The bodies of many more dogmen lay around them and others were on the levels leading down. The last militiawoman standing was brought down with a scream by a dogman that leapt from head height and tore open half her face with its teeth, but this fight was far from over. In the middle of the bloody maelstrom was Huldane. The Talosi warrior carried his sword and shield, and he was cutting a bloody swathe through his foes. He fought without the kind of finesse and style she associated with Atlantian swordplay, instead using his physical strength and agility to tirelessly dispatch the ravening dogmen. He used his shield as another weapon, parrying with such force that it threw one hyen-a-khan backwards, allowing him to drive the rim down onto the neck of another, snapping it. His sword moved fast, a ribbon of white steel, effortlessly bypassing defences and shedding more blood that fell to the snowy ground and turned the floor into a kind of repulsive brown mulch. Still they came and still Huldane fought, batting aside a sword strike with his shield so that the dogman was left exposed, then plunging his blade deep into the creature’s chest. It howled desperately, then fell as Huldane extricated himself and confronted the next enemy.