In a ruined land, cursed by the gods and haunted by the dead, a young mercenary discovers a horror threatening to destroy what is left of civilization.
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This is the final preview chapter of new serial novel Hunted, book 1 of The Blood Rot Saga. If you haven’t seen The Beginning or Chapter 1 and 2, you can start reading here.
Unlike my last serial novel, Nameless (which you can read right here), Hunted will only be available to Erik’s Coffee Club, who support my writing through Buy Me a Coffee. Memberships start at only $3 a month, includes free ebooks or paperbacks (depending on your membership level), meet-ups with the author and, of course, a chapter a week of Hunted, right in your email inbox. And every membership makes it possible for me to spend more time writing, and to reach more people.
Chapter 3
Content Warning: violence, gore, death
In the gaps they’ve created, the other scouts slip through the enemy line. Malc taps Fallon’s shoulder for luck, and leaves him there. It takes another hour, and six more men killed in silence, for the company to reach striking distance from the gate house.
If you could call it striking distance.
The area around the bridge gatehouse is clear for 50 meters. Spiked wood barricades had been set up in a semi-circle around it, in case the enemy breaks through. Guards stand beside lanterns every ten meters, eyes on the gatehouse, bored and ready to go to sleep.
The scouts spread out, keeping the tents between themselves and the guards, until they had one squad behind each tent near the barricades. Men drew blades and stood on either side of each tent door, ready to kill anyone who stepped out, while others readied their bows.
Malc’s crouches with Goff and the rest of the squad in the darkness, blades out, waiting for the worst part of the job. The captain, near one of the middle tents, raised his arm. Officers and sergeants and squad leaders raised their arms a moment later. All the scouts’ eyes went to their squad leaders, their breaths held, waiting.
The captain’s hand dropped. Arrows fly, four to each guard, and everyone not firing rushes the barricades as the guards’ bodies hit the earth. The first scouts at the barricade move them, creating space for the rest of the squads to charge the gatehouse. Malc and their squad race forward.
A bell rings out from the gatehouse.
“Faster!” Malc yells, praying that the tower guards, organized to repel attacks from the bridge, weren’t prepared for an attack from behind.
The sprint to the tower door takes at once forever and an instant. Malc, first there, smashes his boot against the door and it flies open, smacks against a man with a wooden bar in his hand and bounces back. Malc meets it with his shoulder and smashes it wide ad he drives his sword into gut of the man in front of him.
Ten men in various states of undress stand in the room. Some hold weapons in their hands. Others stare in shock. Malc kills a second man and pushes forward, charging up the stairs to the second floor. Blades flash, throwing sharp reflections and wild shadows in the lamp-lit room. Men fight and die and Malc doesn’t stop moving. The second floor is divided into two rooms, and the other one, secured behind a thick door, holds the windlass that pulled up the gatehouse portcullis.
Malc fights forward to the door, drives his boot into it and nearly loses his foot when the men inside slash down on him. He stabs the eye of the closest man and drives forward again, pushing the screaming man on the tip of his blade into his fellows. The rest of the squad charges in behind and for the next few seconds there are only blades and blood and cries of pain. When it is done, Malc runs back to the other room.
The door to the walkway between two towers of the gatehouse stood open. The four men there lay dead, arrows sticking out of their flesh. The door on the other side is open, and Grayley, a squad leader from the second platoon, stands inside it.
“Bastards upstairs are holding out,” Graley calls. “Haven’t got the top floor yet.”
Malc glances back and sees the scouts behind him on the ladder to the roof. The man at the top pushes against it with his back, trying to force it open. He pushes twice, then the trap flies open and a pair of spears drive into him. He screams in pain and falls. Malc swears and looks at the other tower. The merlons—the high part of the battlements—rise to four metres, but the crenels are only three.
“Keep them busy!” Malc calls.
“Got it,” Grayley says. He steps inside and yells, “Push on that damn trap door. Get them scared!”
Malc drops his bow, arrows, sword and cape on the floor, and makes certain his dagger was tight in its sheath. He takes three steps back and a deep breath, then sprints forward, across the length of the bridge and jumps.
Running up a wall isn’t easy, especially when people are trying to kill you, but the captain insisted every scout learn how. All of them had to clear two meters to stay in the Night Scouts, and they had contests to see who could go highest. The man who won—a small, wiry fellow named Frellic—could run up five metres, grab the top of the wall, and pull himself over.
Malc managed four, most days.
He tries not to think about the times he failed as his foot hits the stones beside the door. He leans into the wall, driving his energy upward, hands reaching high. His second foot hist the wall and he pushes again. Two more steps and he gets his hands above the crenel of the battlement. He slaps them down and shoves hard and his waist clears the battlement. He throws his body forward, chest and stomach scraping against the stones as he drags his legs up. Rather than trying to stand, he slides forward and rolls onto the floor. He comes up, dagger in hand, just as the men realized he was there.
The top of each tower holds giant spear throwers aimed at the bridge, requiring two men each to operate them. The four men, each wearing chainmail and holding stabbing spears, stare in shock as Malc charges, grabbing the closest man’s cape and shoving his dagger into the man’s throat. Another man stabs at Malc, and Malc catches the spear haft in his hand. The man pulls it back and Malc follows, dropping low and slashing up into the man’s legs beneath his chain-mail skirting. Blood spurts from the artery on the inside of the guard’s thigh and Malc drives his shoulder up, slamming the man backwards.
Two left.
Malc uses his dagger to parry the closest man’s spear, and the other man thrusts at him as he does. Malc barely dodges it, and circles, putting his back to the bridge. In the dim light of the night sky he sees fear in their faces, even as they move side-by side to better protect themselves. Malc charges again, and the men step backward as one, their spears driving forward, quick as snakes, while they retreat.
Malc avoids one, but the other scored, slamming into his rib-cage. The brigandine’s armour plates stop the point from penetrating, and the padding beneath helps to dull the blow, but the force of it still winds him. He tries to catch the spear-shaft, but the man pulls it back and retreats again, his back touching the battlements.
An arrow hits the guard in the back of the neck, its pointed tip piercing through his chainmail hood. The force of it snaps his head and he yelps in pain. The arrow isn’t in deep enough to kill, but it’s more than enough to distract him. The other guard scurries away from the wall’s edge as Malc drives forward, his dagger finishing the job the arrow started.
The last man stands alone, looking at his dead companions, his face is pale., and his eyes wide with fear. His hands shake and his body trembles. His breath is coming in short gasps, and Malc can see the tears he was holding back. The guard falls to his knees, throwing his spear away and putting up his hands. His voice shakes. “I surrender.”
Malc walks over, put a hand on his shoulder, and drives his knife into the man’s throat. He lets him fall, bleeding and gasping. Four a moment Malc looks at the four furious ghosts, standing over their corpses, then he goes back to the trap door. “Get up here, and bring your bows.”
As the squad below made their way up, Malc risks a look behind. The Scouts stream into the gatehouse, the ones at the back shooting arrows at the assembling Godlander army. Several die as the Godlanders returned fire. The squad leader on the roof shouts orders and soon half his men send their arrows at the Godlanders below while the others aim at the men on the other tower. In short order, the guards on the other tower die and the squads below to drive up and onto the tower roof.
The last of the scouts run into the gatehouse and the doors below slam. Malc can hear the scouts pushing everything they could find against them. It would be tight, with a hundred eighty men—less after the fight—in the tower, but far better than facing ten thousand men in the open.
Besides, it would not be long before they opened the gates and the Kingsmen would charge across the bridge. The Godlander army is strong and well-trained, but no match for the thousands of Kingsmen cavalry massed on the other side of the bridge.
“Malc!” Lieutenant Jillet’s voice echoes through the tower. “Where the fuck are you, idiot? Captain wants you.”
Malc sighs and goes down the ladder. squeezes his way through the crowded room to reach the walkway, and crouches to get across without being hit by Godlander’s arrows. He collects his gear and is about to ask where the captain is, when Goff calls his name.
“Up,” Goff says, pointing to the ladder.
Malc sighs and climbs, his ribs aching from where he’d been hit. Battle-shock is setting in, and he wants nothing more than to go lie down. Instead, he sticks his head up through the trap door and sees the captain and Lieutenant Jillet crouched against the battlements closest to the enemy.
“There you are, useless fuck,” Jillet growls. “Why weren’t you with your squad?”
“I cleared the other roof,” Malc says, pausing a moment before adding, “sir.”
“You cleared that tower yourself, then?” Captain Braccart asks.
“An arrow hit one in the back of the neck,” Malc says as he crawled over to the other men. “Distracted him enough that I could finish him off. Then the last one tried to surrender.”
“You better not have taken any prisoners,” Jillet says. “We got enough problems without watching them.”
“I slit him,” Malc says, not bothering to look at Jillet. “Then Grayley’s squad came up and gave arrow cover to take this tower.”
“Good work.” Captain Braccart says. “Squad leader Declarn died outside. You’re replacing him.”
The words catch Malc entirely by surprise, and he stares with shock. Declarn served Lieutenant Bilfer, which meant Malc would report to him and not Jillet. Relief, more powerful than the battle-shock, makes his hands shake. “Thank you, sir.”
“For now, you still report to Jillet,” the captain says. “You’ll take your full rank when we start the march home, after this mess is over. Meanwhile, you’ve earned the right to do this.”
He holds out an arrow with a bulbous pierced tip it and waxed rags wrapped around its shaft. It would fly neither straight nor far, but that wasn’t its purpose. Malc takes it and calls down below, “Give me a flame!”
Goff passes up a lamp, and grins as he says, “Here, squad.”
Malc shakes his head at the other man’s happiness as he opens the lamp and put the arrow shaft against the flame. The arrow flares up brighter than any torch or lantern. Malc raises it, pointes it across the river, and fires.
Air rushes through the holes on the arrow tip, making it scream as it flies. The flaming rags shine bright against the dark sky, and reflect on the wide river below. Malc cranes his neck over the battlement, looking for the signal fire that means cavalry are riding out onto the bridge.
It doesn’t come.
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