The Channeling (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 3) Read online

  “Two lines, back to back! Spears out with two lines back to back!” shouted Darius. “Form two lines and put your backs together.”

  “He’s too strong!” shouted one of Falon’s veterans, holding a shield in one hand and an axe in the other as he slowly retreated in the face of the Blue Steel Knight.

  Before she knew it, Falon found that she’d stepped up in front of the enemy knight.

  “Run while you can, boy,” snorted the Blue Steel Knight, “

  I promise I won’t put two feet of steel in your back the moment you turn,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  “Ice Fox! Ice Fox!” came a cry to the left, followed by a growing clamor.

  “A-Raven for a Swan. A-Raven for a Swan,” bellowed a number of men, whose identities she could guess, in counterpoint to the ‘Ice Fox’ cries.

  “The Short Mire! Saint Aeofia Lives…in the Short Mire,” bellowed a familiar, belabored voice. “Reinforcements!”

  “You’d refrain from two feet of steel—only because you’d put in three!” Falon riposted to the Blue Steel Knight, her confidence rising at the knowledge of inbound reinforcements. “Hold fast, men; reinforcements are here. The Hog! Form the Hog!”

  The Blue Steel Knight scowled and raised his battle axe. “They’ll fizzle like a fart in the wind as soon as I chop you down to size, half-pint,” he growled, bringing his axe down.

  With magic-enhanced reflexes, Falon leaned to the side. The axe to slid past, cutting nothing denser than air as it skimmed by her ear and shoulder.

  “Yah!” her face contorted as she thrust her blade at the enemy. There was a clang as her blade skidded off the man’s armored chest plate. “Watch out that I don’t force open another tap in that beer keg you’re calling a belly,” Falon freely insulted the other knight.

  “A beer keg, is it?” the Blue Steel Knight said, slapping his plate armor with a clang as his gauntleted hand struck his belly, “you’re going to have to do a lot better if you want to tap this keg, runt!” With a confident, booming laugh, he brought his weapon to a ready position.

  “Just another bung hole waiting to be opened,” Falon retorted, bringing her sword around for another strike.

  “Get lost,” the Knight snapped, taking long, earth-eating strides into her strike zone, and then followed up with a right hook to the face.

  Falon grunted wordlessly as she reeled from the blow, and quickly pulled her sword back in line

  “They send me a boy when what it takes is a man to stop me!” roared the Blue Knight, striking her blade with his heavier axe and forcing it to the side. Stepping forward, he punched her in the face a second time. “Is there no man amongst you, or are you all dogs who prefer lapping at your master’s heel when not begging for table scraps? Run, surrender or die by my blade!”

  Shaking her head to try and clear it, Falon scrambled back purely fighting defensively. She was shocked that even her great strength wasn’t enough, and his punches had not just hurt—they’d staggered her!

  “Cowards! Too dumb to live, too stupid to die. Run while you can, pretty boys,” chortled the Blue Knight.

  Falon was just about to step forward when a man in thick, old—nearly ancient, in fact—iron armor stepped in front of her and leveled his sword at the Blue Steel Knight.

  “Go and get thee hither, or prepare to die, braggart!” challenged Sir Orisin boldly.

  “I can take him,” Falon said in a low voice.

  “You could indeed, but we need to shut him up now. You help rally the men,” Sir Orisin said equally quietly, “I’ll handle this.”

  Taking a look at his bent back plate and blood seeping from a wound in his upper arm, Falon was concerned but the Raven Knight was between her and the Frog Knight. So she couldn’t just launch herself back into the fight without risk of fouling Orisin’s sword arm.

  “Bold words for a man in armor so ancient my great grandfather would have been ashamed to wear it,” challenged the Blue Steel Knight. “Know that you meet your fate at the hands of Sir Kalvin Lackland, the Bonny Beheader!”

  “Sir Orisin, at your service—and you I will send into the grave,” replied Sir Orisin raising his shield and leveling the tip of his sword at the ‘Bonny Beheader.’

  “They used to call me the Tree Splitter when I was younger,” the Blue Steel Knight said conversationally as he sidled closer to Sir Orisin, his eyes as sharp and focused as any raptor riding a thermal in the sky. “But my axe reaped too many heads on the battlefield, so they agreed to change my nickname. I like the Bonny Beheader better.”

  “Are you also enamored with the sound of your own voice?” Orisin growled. “Enough talk, more action.”

  “My axe is heavy and my aim is sure. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” roared Sir Kalvin in his blue steel armor.

  “Ha!” Orisin barked back, and they slammed into one another like a pair of giant, lumbering wrestlers meeting on the mat for the first time. “Thou art really full of thyself, aren’t thou?” Orisin grunted, shield punching the Bonny Beheader right in the face.

  “You dig your own grave, Raven!” snarled Sir Kalvin, looking more angry than cheerful for the first time since he broke through their lines.

  “One good turn deserves another…or so they say!” Sir Orisin ended, driving his blade down hard enough to break through Sir Kalvin’s guard and strike his armored shoulder before glancing off.

  “Die for me!” roared the Blue Steel Knight, bringing his battle axe down with both hands on its wooden shaft.

  Sir Orisin brought his shield up to block, and when axe met shield the axe punched through the metal rimed wood in a shower of splinters. Sir Orisin was driven to his knees, but with a shout and a heave the former Raven Knight shoved back the axe-wielding Kalvin and regained his footing.

  “You’ll have to do better than that for me to die for you,” Orisin bellowed, sword and ruined shield chopping forward in an alternating rhythm until he’d pushed the Frog Knight back several steps. As he did so, the growing fight was cut off from Falon’s view by the press of men on both sides.

  Falon grabbed a pair of Swans, who had been fighting back to back when they were cut off, and shoved them toward the reforming Swan lines.

  “A-Swan!” she shouted to rally the men whose line had been disrupted by the Bonny Beheader when he lead his charge.

  But instead of rallying more of her men, she attracted the attention of the enemy instead and three men seemed to come at her all at once.

  Pressed from all sides, Falon felt she had no choice but to go all out. The boar-skin hilt clenched in one hand and Boar Knife made for her by Vance the village blacksmith back home in the other, she channeled power through her tattoos and launched herself in the air a good four feet.

  With her sword, she knocked aside the first man’s blade easily enough. As she came down, she drove the knife deep into his neck. The knife stuck on bone and, when it wouldn’t easily come free, she was forced to let it go.

  Sensing danger thanks to that brief hesitation with the knife, she whirled around and saw that the enemy blade which had been about to be driven through her back was now about to tear her throat out.

  Screaming, Falon dropped her sword and instinctively raised her hands. A burst of mixed golden and brown energy surged from her fingers in a spray of magic, instead of the tightly interwoven-back-upon-itself-ball she’d been training at, but at that moment it didn’t matter.

  “My eyes!” screamed the man, jerking back his free hand and clawing at his face. His vision taken away as he staggered back, his sword merely sliced the side of her neck instead of taking her head off or striking the throat he’d been aiming at. “Sorcerer!” he cried with dismay.

  “He’s a warlock!” exclaimed the third man, driving his pitchfork into Falon’s left leg—her power-channeling leg.

  Falon cried out as her leg crumpled; the pain was fully triple anything like she had expected and, unsurprisingly, her magical connection to the earth disappeared.

 
With farm tools tending to be more iron than steel, due to the relative costs, when you suddenly shoved it into the limb she was actively drawing power with it was as if instead of life-bearing magic she was suddenly sucking on poison. The change was abrupt enough, going from ‘full-on witch power’ to ‘powerless girl with her leg stabbed through with life-sucking iron,’ Falon was unable to immediately bounce back to her feet.

  “Face cold iron!” screamed a man that Falon realized was not another armsman, but what looked like a townsman or well-to-do farmer as he released his hold on the pitchfork still in her leg and jumped her.

  “Get off me!” she shouted as he started to beat her around the face with his two bare hands.

  “Suffereth not a witch to live! That saying goes double for any demon spawn from betwixt her legs!” he bellowed, sitting on her torso and punching while she tried to use her hands to hold him off.

  With her power unexpectedly neutralized by the iron pitchfork, Falon found herself in the same situation any girl would find herself in when a larger, heavier man sat on her chest and started beating on her.

  She flailed and tried to strike up from the ground, but with both sword, knife and power all gone…

  “Die—die—die!” the peasant shouted hysterically before suddenly stiffening.

  Moment’s later, a sword tip punched through his front and a man’s well-shod boot sent him falling off to the side spasming.

  “Oh, Lady,” Falon whimpered for a single, blissful moment, thankful simply for the end of the beating. Then a hand was gripping her forearm and dragging her to her feet.

  “Falon, are ye okay?” asked Ernest, his farmer’s brogue thick with his concern.

  “Ernest…what are you doing here?” Falon asked stupidly. her head still dizzy from all the blows.

  “Suffereth not a—” hissed the still-twitching peasant, his eyes staring hatefully at the pair of them.

  “Oh, will you shut it already and die?!” Ernest screamed, and then in one fast jerk he placed his foot just above Falon’s ankle and pulled the pitchfork from her leg.

  Falon cried out and nearly fell again, but Ernest wasn’t done. He brought the pitch fork up and, while the whole rest of his body was coming down, he drove the farm tool into the man’s neck. There was a high-pitched ‘ting’ as one spine of the fork broke on bone, but the rest of the weapon drove through the man and suddenly he was dead.

  “You killed him,” Falon said stupidly, her head still not entirely clear.

  “Hurry, we have to get you back into the lines,” Ernest said, grabbing hold of her hand and dragging her behind him while he was waving a sword in front of him with his free hand.

  “But your leg! And what are you doing here?” Falon finally demanded, her head starting to clear somewhat.

  “I’m hurt, not crippled—I can still walk!” Ernest brushed off her concern. “And as for what I’m doin’? I’m saving yer life!”

  They were interrupted by a brawl involving four men that suddenly came their direction.

  Angrily, and not thinking too clearly, Falon summoned magic and this time, just like she intended, a pair of swirling magic balls formed around her hands. “Bastards!” she cried, not seeing the actual faces of the enemy peasants in front but rather that of the would-be ‘witch killer’ with his pitchfork superimposed over theirs.

  Punching forward with both hands simultaneously, one hand struck a man in the back of the head, causing him to instantly collapse, while the other hand took a man in the chest.

  He gurgled, coughed, and clutched his chest before falling to his knees and then keeling over. With savage glee, Falon watched him fall over and then something in her loosened. She felt as if some of the aggravation from the beating she’d just taken that had been shadowing her heart seemed to lessen, and her expression eased.

  Then she looked and saw Ernest staring back at her with unmasked surprise—and possibly something more fearful behind his eyes.

  “What are you looking at?” Falon said defensively, while mentally kicking herself. She’d just let the proverbial cat out of the bag in a big way. All of her secrets had just been unthinkingly exposed. Her face flushed bright red and she glared at him, “So what? I can do magic. Want to make something of it?” she demanded accusingly.

  Ernest blinked and then rolled his eyes at her. “Right here? Stop being such a drama lord,” he told her sharply. “Mister ‘So what? So I can do magic!’,’” he mimed, as if childishly mimicking and making fun of her. “News flash for you here: I’ve known you could do magic since the first time you jumped eight feet high on patrol and then used a branch to change your direction while still in the air. I mean, is it even humanly possible to jump that high without magic?” he asked rhetorically.

  “What?!” Falon exclaimed, feeling surprise and embarrassment in equal measure. “But…I was so careful to make sure no one saw me when I practiced!” she all but whined with frustration.

  “Umm, you left your boot off. I mean only an idiot leaves his boot off in the freezing snow, so being your runner, or valet, or aide, or whatever it is, I ran off to find you before your toes froze off. I found you alright, but you were eight feet in the air!” he said, using his sword to defend himself from a halfhearted attack as they sidled over to a group of Swans.

  Caught out and feeling like she was a fool for being so sure that no one had known about her gift, Falon couldn’t help but glare at him as they fought their way over to, and then inside of, the group.

  “Lieutenant!” a man cried happily.

  Falon absentmindedly looked over at him and raised a hand in acknowledgement. “So why the look of surprise just now if you ‘knew all along’?” she asked snappishly.

  “Well, I saw you jumping around in the snow without a boot before. I figured maybe you could do other things and that if you wanted me to know ye would have told me, but I never saw balls of light on your fists before! Of course I was surprised—they looked like mini-fireballs,” he complained.

  “Ah,” Falon was temporarily stumped, “I don’t have time for this.” Then, unable to help herself, she quickly corrected him before turning away and back to her duties, “And they’re nothing like fireballs. A fireball is a metal wizard ball wrapped in mystical flames. What I did was quite different,” then, not stopping to take the time to explain further, she turned with a sniff that ended up being more of a snort as blood from her nose came into her mouth, causing her to choke.

  Leaving Ernest behind, Falon—thankful for a moment to catch her breath—looked around until she finally spotted Darius, who was doing his level best to keep everyone together.

  “Lieutenant!” he said with relief upon seeing her, “glad to see you made it. Although…it looks like you just had a fight with a tavern door and tried to use your face for a battering ram.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Falon said sourly. “What’s our situation?”

  “It’s a mess out there,” Darius said, his mouth twisting bitterly, “the rest of the Left Wing broke and ran. Most of the enemy Right are chasing them as we speak, but they left enough behind to keep us pinned down and busy. The Center collapsed thanks to those invisible knights of theirs, and the last I saw our Wizards were exhausted and trying to make a great escape atop the backs of a few pack donkeys. Well, that was the wizards that have been with us for a while; I saw a group of White Tower boys riding off on their horses at the first sign the Wizard Corps was under threat.”

  “Earth and Field,” Falon swore.

  “Right now all that’s left is the Right Wing—which if you can believe it actually seems to be advancing and driving what’s left of the enemy Left before it—and the Reserve, which is now flying the Prince’s banner. We need to start a fighting withdrawal soon or prepare to hand over our swords and surrender. The day is lost and the Right’s too far away for us to try and join them,” he explained grimly.

  “We expected the Prince to look after himself; there’s no surprise there,” Falon said shortly. “Well so
mebody had better pull a chicken out of their hat sooner rather than later—and before all our eggs are cracked, scrambled and eaten up by these Frogs, Sergeant. Prepare for a fighting withdrawal,” Falon said bitterly. She was used to fighting hard—even being overrun and forced to fall back, or being left for dead wasn’t outside of her expectations—but under this Prince they’d always achieved victory in the end. She guessed that she’d just subconsciously assumed that he was so underhanded, scheming and conniving that he couldn’t lose.

  Well, it looked like the only idiot for thinking that way around here was her.

  “On it, Lieutenant,” Darius said, “I advise we try and suck in whoever’s left of the Ice Fox company first.”

  “I agree,” Falon said, wondering what she’d do if she didn’t agree with his plan before shaking the thought off as non-productive nonsense. The fact was that she did agree. She wouldn’t have left behind Sir Orisin and his men, even if he hadn’t just personally saved her from the blue steel Bonny Beheader. Besides, she was only sixteen and trained for running a household not an expert in battles and armies. Despite her recent ‘on the field’ training, there was no shame in leaning on the people she herself had selected to help her.

  “Good,” Darius said and then turned and stomped over to a pair of boys holding drums, “sound them.” The drums started to beat. “Echelon advance. We’re going to move forward until we link back up with Sir Orisin and the Ice Fox Company,” he shouted, and then repeated himself to start passing the order.

  “Advance?” a man called out with dismay.

  “Who cares about the Ice Fox? Right now we’re safe in here! They can come to us or let them rot, I say,” said another man.

  “Maybe in the second line you think you’re safe, but my arm’s starting to get tired. How about you and I trade and you take my spear and this spot in the line?” snapped a spearman, using his weapon to keep the enemy off him.

  “Advance in unison,” shouted Darius, “march together, men. Push!”

  “Push the advance!” Falon called out in support. “Mind your intervals.”