Rurik's Arc

Chapter 15 of 22

The center column climbed the ravine's stone side. Rurik watched from behind the barrel wall as enemy foot soldiers spilled over the high edge and fell on his archers. His trap had worked on the horses. Now it was failing on the men. He killed one rider pinned against the casks, then turned and saw why the attack would not stop. A man stood on the ravine's rim, tall in a red cloak, pointing with a sword. He waved fresh soldiers up the slope in waves. Every time Rurik's line pushed back, the man in red sent more. The enemy commander was steering the whole fight from above. Rurik grabbed Thorin's arm. The old dwarf had walked at his shoulder all night, blunt and steady, his father's rune-carved axe wet to the haft. "See him? The one directing." Thorin followed his eyes. "Kill him. The waves stop." "They stop," Rurik said. "I can't reach him. The slope's crawling." "Then don't climb it." Thorin nodded at the barrier's low end, where the ground fell away into the ravine. "Send the worm." Rurik looked at the wyrm coiled behind the wall. Its iron scales ran with blood from the trapped horses. Its gold eye tracked him. He had held it back for the killing throat. But the throat was won, and the rim was losing. He put his hand flat on the cold scales. "Up," he said. "The man in red." The wyrm poured out of the ravine like water running backward. It went up the stone face where no horse could climb, silent, fast. Bjorn saw it go. He wrenched his axe from a fallen man and shouted to the archers, plain and hard: "Cover it! Loose high!" Arrows raked the rim. Kjell threw a silver-tipped knife that took a soldier through the throat before the man could turn. Gunnar heaved a broken door aside and drove three enemy back with his hammer, clearing the wyrm's path. The commander saw the wyrm too late. He swung his sword at the great head. The blade skated off the iron scales. The wyrm struck once and took him off the rim. He fell into the ravine and did not rise. The waves broke. Without the man in red pointing, the soldiers on the slope stopped climbing. They looked to a rim that gave no orders. Rurik climbed onto a cask and roared for his line to push. His warband surged up the stone, and the enemy foot began to run. Thorin wiped his axe and spat. "Told you." Rurik did not answer. He watched the enemy break and scatter down the far side of the ravine. The dawn assault was finished. But he counted his archers on the high ground and found gaps where men had stood. The wyrm came down slow, dragging one wing of its body, a fresh gash open along its flank. The southern host was broken. His weapon was hurt, and the siege was not yet lifted.