Broken Rule | Chapter 8
This post is chapter eight of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on Steemit.
The story so far:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapters 3 & 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Duke Benedek hunched his shoulders, trying to adjust his fur-lined cloak to keep the chill away. He sat on a rickety stool in front of a small campfire, drinking a foul tea. He hated the stuff, but his herbwoman said it was good for his cough. At the reminder, a racking fit of coughing doubled him over. Baron Joszua Chase, who sat next to him, no longer even attempted to offer assistance. Benedek assumed that Joszua had grown used to his cough, that it faded into the background like the wind. Benedek wished he could forget his cough, but it was a nearly constant thing now, and each time a fit hit him he worried that he was coughing out his last breath. Benedek was three quarters of a century old, and was clearly near the end of his days. When Benedek's coughing subsided Joszua said, “Your Grace, you should stay in the camp, I can lead the men on the next assault.” So, he had noticed the cough after all.
Benedek considered the young man's offer. The Chase family had been friends of Benedek's family for years. Indeed, Joszua's grandfather had been the Duke's closest friend, although he was twenty years in the grave by now. Joszua had served as Benedek's squire in his youth. Now he was a grown man, a good man, and a good knight. He was probably ready to command on his own. Benedek longed to take him up on his offer, to take some time to rest.
Truth be told, Benedek longed to retire from the field altogether, to go back to the acres and acres of orchards that surrounded his ancestral home. He longed to return to his young wife, his third. His first wife had given him three beautiful daughters, but took ill shortly after and died. His second wife had given him four daughters, but then age and a weak heart caught up with her. He had married his third wife only a year ago and she was heavy with child back at home. Sometimes he regretted that such a pretty young thing was stuck with a decrepit old creature like himself, but he needed a son to carry on his legacy and to have a child he needed a young wife. An ambitious baron had been quite persistent at offering his daughter's hand, and Benedek finally relented. Sometimes he found it difficult to think of her as his wife, so young and fragile, younger than most of his daughters. She wasn't someone he could talk to, like his first wife, or even someone he could see as an equal, like his second who had ruled their household staff with an iron fist for so many years. Still, she was alone there, and a man had a duty to be with his wife. More than anything Benedek wanted to go home to her, to just go home to the house he knew and the land he loved. But he was a man of duty, before anything else, and couldn't accept the young man's offer to lead the troops in his stead.
“No, Joszua, I am the Lord Marshal, and I shall ride with the men. I may be too old to fight myself, but when the king asks the Lord Marshal to take the field, the Lord Marshal must lead the men. It's what my father did, and his father before.”
“As you say, Grace,” Joszua conceded. “The men will be ready to march an hour after dawn, although I'm still nervous about moving without any intelligence about the passes ahead.”
“There's nothing more to be done. Radek should have returned long ago, we have to assume he was taken by the goblins. We will be ambushed at some point. The men will have to be on their guard at all times.”
“As you say, Grace. Although I fear this entire expedition is cursed. A score more men deserted in the night.”
Benedek let out a long sigh. “Can you blame them, Joszua? Our scouts disappear and we face ambush at every turn. No matter how many of the blasted goblins we kill there always seem to be more. Still, we need to maintain discipline. Remind the men that deserters will be killed, and see if you can find any agitators that we can make examples of.”
Joszua was about to reply when they were interrupted by screaming from the camp perimeter. They both rose and moved toward the commotion, and Benedek cursed the ache in his right knee as he tried to keep up with his younger friend.
When they got there, two of the sentries were already dead. A man, stripped to the waist and covered in dried blood, had used a sword to slash one's neck and stab the other through the gut. They both lay bleeding on the ground, unmoving. The attacker screamed like a mad beast, advancing on a third sentry when an archer let fly and put an arrow into his shoulder. The madman didn't even slow down and used a vicious overhead strike to chop into the last sentry where his neck met his shoulder.
“Most Holy,” whispered Joszua. “That's Radek.”
Benedek's mind reeled. Was that possible? That sturdy young man driven mad in the mountain passes? But he looked at the madman's face and had to admit it was true. Joszua had already drawn his blade and advanced. Benedek's hand went to his sword and he drew it a few inches, but then looked down at what he was doing. Should he help? Could he, if he tried? It had been decades since he'd actually been this close to combat, and he wasn't sure he could even remember all the forms, much less get his ancient body to adopt them. But could he leave his friend to fight a madman alone? He pulled the blade all the way clear and edged closer to the fight.
Radek rained a flurry of wild strikes down on Joszua, but Joszua easily parried all of them. Radek lashed out like a beast, not a trained fighting man. Joszua wasn't attacking, but was trying to reason with him. “Radek, what's happened to you? I'm your friend. Radek, won't you yield? Yield, man! I don't want to hurt you!” Radek's attacks were growing ever more furious, pushing Joszua backwards. Benedek was grateful that this moved the fight further away from him, but felt guilty for that sentiment.
Joszua was an uncommonly good swordsman, the most precise and disciplined that Benedek had ever seen. Now, that discipline seemed to be working against him as he held in check any response to Radek's attacks. “It's no use, Joszua,” called Benedek. “He's too far gone. Save yourself.”
Joszua nodded and added counterstrikes to his parries. This forced Radek back, although the wounds he received only seemed to increase his savagery. One of Radek's wild strikes got through, slicing into Joszua's left arm. Joszua hissed in pain, but brought his right elbow up into Radek's face, knocking him back. He followed that with a lateral strike that sliced Radek across the belly. The fury finally seemed to go out of Radek as he dropped first to his knees, and then down onto his face, his blood oozing into the dirt.
Joszua and Benedek sheathed their swords, and Benedek went over to inspect Joszua's wounded arm. The archer who had shot Radek earlier approached Benedek and Joszua and said, “I'm sorry, lords. What with all the blood, we thought he must be wounded and let down our guard, even though he didn't give proper answer to the challenge.” Benedek ignored the breach in discipline. He reached down to Radek and rolled him over so he could see his face.
Joszua approached, his right hand clamped over his wound to stem the bleeding, and looked down at the dead knight. “Your Grace, what could he have seen in the passes to drive him to this?”
“I don't know,” whispered Duke Benedek, “but I won't send the rest of the men to face the same.” The fight had caught the attention of most of the men in camp and a large crowd had gathered. Benedek raised his voice so he could be heard by the crowd. “Strike the camp! We're...” His voice gave out to another coughing fit. After he recovered, he continued more softly, “We're leaving these damned mountains.”
A cheer went up from the men.