Vol.5, Ch.5, P.20
“Rally ’round! To the centre! Rally, rally!” screamed Dennis. “Forget your fracted ranks! Yield whilst, if ye must! Just rally! Rally, confound’ee all!”
Alas and at last, all levity was lost from that voice of his; for he and all his Cutcrowns found their feet firm no longer upon the holy slopes. No, the ground now was level; for far aback had they been pushed—far, far down, all the way down to the spurs of Déu Tsellin. A blow too-grievous this was, dealt by whom but the knights of the 1st in all their martial fury.
Still, in spite of their sallowing plight, the Cutcrowns continued their resistance, broken blade and failing flesh be damned. For they were all of them once-wronged in some way; in the past, checked and trampled by the chariot of Londosian duplicity. Thus could they ill-suffer themselves to flee here; not when so aface the 1st, the greatest aegis to their long-loathed aggrievers. And so did their swords sing and their hearts howl—with resilience more wroth than was ever witnessed elsewhere upon that warlike mountain.
“Rruooohh!!” they blasted. “Stand your ground! Sta—and!!” they bellowed. On and on, the Cutcrowns waded against tides untenable. Yet from neither strength nor training, formal or native, was their endurance derived. This was their day, their doom, their long-desired reckoning; hence with all sinew and spirit that might be spared did they bear the terrible brunt of the 1st. Stubbornness was their battle standard; desperation but redoubled them as beyond all hope they held their listing frontlines.
Oh, these battlers, so brave and unbending. Indeed, for a force comprising not officers, but soldiers of fortune to a majority, the industry of the Cutcrowns was one of great wonder. But how could it be otherwise? Through all their lives had they known toils to break the will. For these ill-starred upstarts, these climbers out of chasms cold and cruel, these men of muck and misery, this was nary a thing so new.
“Aye, aye! Gurt lush, me lads!” cried a sweat- and blood-drenched Dennis. “Keep ’em busy! Keep ’em ’ungry! But bain’t too brave, now, no, no! Lest they eat you alive!”
The Cutcrowns roared together in answer. It was do-or-die for their lot, as it had been for all the agonising hours unto this sunset; and it showed—clearly and horribly, upon their fraught and furrowed faces all. Such a sight was hardly lost to the eyes of Francis Behrmann as he watched from the 1st’s centre ranks anear the slopes. And there, stood beside him, was his fair mareschal, resting for a while her bloody blade and observing the battle with equal intent.
“Quite the characters, these Cutcrowns,” noted Francis. “If they mean only to stick out and stall, then I daresay even we may not win so swiftly.”
“No, indeed,” returned Estelle. Low was her tone, curiously enough, and her stare seemingly astray. Verily, it was not upon the Cutcrowns that she now gazed, but elsewhere to the right. Francis followed her eyes, and next was heard from him something most unusual of the mild-mannered gentleman.
“Hmn!?”
A gasping yelp.
With widened eyes, he saw it: a distant shade in sure approach, like a shadow of a passing cloud. Only, shimmering therein were myriad points and edges of steel. And fluttering aloft were standards stained and tattered, but proud all the same. Not from his position could Francis guess their so-damaged devices, but seeing as this roving shadow had come from the south, he guessed it true: that hurrying hither was the host of Reù.
“Reinforcements…?” uttered Estelle. “Fates be fickle.”
“Fickle”, indeed; as not even the hero-dame herself had foreseen this turn. For their part, the Cutcrowns were no less startled, and even paled in their complexions upon perceiving the approaching shadow. Flanked, they thought themselves to be. Flanked and soon to be dead. But in time, they saw that it was the Reùlingen, who, coming up now beside the Cutcrowns, with shields beating and spirits rousing, commenced an onset upon the 1st.
“To the fray, to the fray! Once mo—ore!!”
And there at the head was Guido, his spear a swirling storm, his cries a crack of thunder. And as though in echo, the rest of the Reùlingen raised their embattled blades and bellowed all together, “Wuooo—ohh!!”
Once vanquished these braves were, and upon this very day, no less. But as they broke upon the 1st in a throng of a thousand and more, it well-appeared to all that they had returned for revenge. Revenge—and rescue for these Men of the Cutcrowns.
Men who had repelled the Salvators; Men who defied now the 1st to great sacrifice; Men who each bore bruises and blood-wounds beyond number. To the Reùlingen, such as sight was as a stab to the soul. For the braves themselves had been broken by the 2nd and thereafter considered deeply the abandonment of all this battle, being now bereft of their hero so-hailed, the foremost main of their momentum, their gifted and guiding light. And yet, what of these Men? This force more motley than military? This long-heroless horde?
Oh, a “stab to the soul”, most verily. Beside such Men, the Reùlingen felt smallness and shame, bitterness and annoyance—and even enmity. But in their hearts each and all was birthed, as well, one more emotion, meagre yet all the more meaningful:
That of “respect”.
“Lǣċas, over here! The wounded! They are many!”
“Sons of Man! Come hither if you’ve a hand for bow and arrow!”
There: Reùlingen cries, breaking the clouds. And mingled therein: the barks of Men no less livid. Yet it was, indeed, a chorus; though coarse and callous, a chorus of Men and Nafílim finding a way to a future—together.
For this, Dennis had no words. It was all he could do to gape and gawk. Frieda, too, standing by his side, found herself no less a fish out of water. But presently, there appeared afore the two a young lady of the Reùlingen, who said to them, “Herr Dennis? And the Fräulein Frieda, I presume? You both can yet make battle, or?”
Dennis blinked at her unsteadily. “Why… if thou bain’t the lass Erika,” he gasped. “Ne’er in all me wildest dreams did I… Oh, but the unbidden aid oft proves the very best, they says…”
“Ah, Erika! The jarl’s lass!” said Frieda gladsomely. “Aye, that we can, no small thanks to you an’ yours!”
“That is well,” replied Erika. And upon the two she smiled, softly and—as discerned by Dennis—sadly and distantly, if only for the merest of moments.
And in seeing her so, the Cutcrown leader recalled then the council at Arbel. There had he seen it: the gaze with which Erika had glimpsed upon Walter. Nay; not merely the eyes of a fellow warfarer those had been. Long and lustrously lived was Dennis’ life; enough that when there burnt between a man and a woman more than did meet the eye, his would be the first to find it. Hence did it harrow him so, to know asudden what Walter’s passing meant to the Reùlingen maiden.
Nevertheless, this was nary an occasion for condolence. Though marred by a most unimaginable loss, still had Erika and her fracted folk come to the Cutcrowns’ succour. Thus was this the time to make good on their gallantry—to wipe their tears with battle and bravery.
And with that thought, Dennis looked gravely to the foesome 1st and then said with all resolve, “Right. One more page, one more line, ’ee be. Let’s dip now the quill in our blood! An’ pen a turn to this terrible tale!”
No foundation buttressed those words. Only belief. Belief that in holding firm the 1st here at the mountain’s foot, there upon the summit might at last be moved the long-slumbering stone of history. Neither women in Dennis’ midst dared doubt him, be she daughter of Man or Nafílim. No; they nodded together, and with as much unison as the Cutcrowns and the Reùlingen did in now defying the 1st.
Cries spirited and soaring ensued then from all around, shaking every pebble and cowing every cloud to bedight the battlefield.
And far away, there uttered Francis, “Lo, Mademoiselle,” as he stared back in wonder at the wuthering throngs. And Estelle next to him, too, was taken full by the sight so afire afore her. “Striving hand-in-hand they are,” Francis mused. “Men and Nafílim both.”
“Indeed… so ’twould seem,” answered Estelle. And then for a moment, the mareschal closed her eyes, let fall her face, and sank deep into thought. And at length she revived her visage, unveiled her vision, and in a voice faintly aquiver, said, “Somewhere, a wolf means to move the Moon. And now does the Moon quake for it.”
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