Somewhere off in the far distance, a dying man was screaming for his mother.
"Cavalry!" a messenger was yelling in Dorumish, as he rode past them.
Artam knew just enough Dorumish to understand the words, but the fear in his voice would have been plain in any tongue.
"Don't rout! Stand your ground and fight!" High and shrill, the centurion's voice carried a long way in the morning air, far beyond his company.
Anyone with eyes could see the left flank crumbling. A line of cavalrymen were cutting through the men like a gilded knife to butter.
War. More like slaughter. Men stumbling through the mud with their entrails hanging out.
Severed limbs and broken bones and pools of blood.
That's the crow calling, the pale mare brooding. That's death.
The faceless child had mounted his pale mare and was riding toward them with his obsidian steel in hand, but Artam refused him audience a second time.
"Hold your ground!" the commander screamed and Artam relayed it to his squad.
They were the reserves.
The front lines were spearmen, busy dealing with the wicked spears of the enemy, to the left the line of cavalrymen were sweeping through the ranks, and to the right was the river.
"Pilums!" Artam readied his pilum.
"Release!" in the next second the sky darkened as hundreds of pilums took to the sky, courtesy of the legionnaires that had launched them.
It broke some incoming cavalrymen, but most remained undeterred.
"Hold and stand strong! Reinforcements will arrive!"
Artam's legs spread firm, and planted on the ground. In one hand was his small round shield, in the other the steel gladius that he tended with such care.
'Fighting without cavalry? What had the commanders been thinking!
Dust flew from the hooves of the chargers.
The legions saw the black mass of death, neighing and screaming like the scythe swing of the death approach them, their eyes bloody and crazed, moving towards them in a storm of dust that drowned all the light around them as they bared their intent to not only kill them but destroy their bodies of the face of the earth.
Just feeling the earth tremble at their approach was bowel-inducing.
But the legions might have been made of stone as well. They stood in the horses' path, the front row made of a sparse line of spearmen.
The front row exploded into a maelstrom of dust and gore. Horse neighed as they were skewered and fell. Others didn't stop and trampled on their fallen comrades and enemies alike.
But their orderly charge was broken.
Amongst the group of riders riding towards Artam's path, there was one with a tall plume on his helm and dressed in decorated armor
In the next instant they were less than a meter from crashing into them, bright steel point winked in the sunlight.
'I'm going to be killed,' He thought. . . But spun away sideways.
The blade passed harmlessly over his head. And suddenly Artam was rolling, and bringing the razor-sharp gladius around in a silver arc. He heard the charger scream as the blade bit into his legs, and then the horse was falling, the rider tumbling from the saddle.
A sudden silence swept Artam , drowning the sounds of battle all around. The rider had gotten to his feet.
He was tall and spare, wearing a long chain mail hauberk and gauntlets of polished steel, but he'd lost his helm and blood ran down into his eyes from a wound across his forehead.
Artam aimed a swipe at his face, but the tall man slammed it aside.
"Die," he screamed.
He turned in a circle as Artam shadowed his movement, hacking at his head and shoulders.
Steel rang on steel, and Artam soon realized that the tall man was quicker and stronger than he was.
"Die," the man grunted, chopping at him savagely.
Artam barely got his shield up in time, and the wood seemed to explode inward under the force of the blow.
"Die!" the swordsman bellowed, shoving in close and slamming Artam across the temple so hard his head rang.
The steel sang again. All around them carnage danced to its tune, and there was a shout somewhere far off and the crash of thunder in another.
Then the opening was there. Artam planted and pivoted.
For an instant, it seemed that the slash had not touched him. Then a string of red tears appeared across the big man's throat, bright as a Guluny's hair, and the blood gushed out of him, and he fell
"You die," Artam told him, and he did.
Artam stood over the corpse and checked his surroundings.
The enemy were routing?
The legions cavalry had come from the north, attacking the enemies rear. And sweeping from the south, legions swarming ashore from docked ships.
Somewhere far away he could hear fighting, a different one. The kind only champions and Primes could make.
The ground quaked from their impacts and dust rose into the air as two champions face off.
Artam gulped, ' I have to move on.' He thought.
But something caught his leg as he moved.
The dead man smiled at him. Fear stricken, Artam tried to run, but his body wouldn't move.
The scenes of the battlefield quieted.
"Where are you going? Aren't you dead son? Join me" The corpse's face was no longer the same, this time a different but familiar face.
"N-No! I didn't mean to kill you." Artam pleaded.
Then another corpse grabbed Artam. He turned to look.
"Oh, but you did! You caused my death too." This time it was a familiar priest.
They dragged him down as he tried screaming and wrestling free, but to no avail.
Then the bloodied mud swallowed him whole.
Fear swept over him in a cold rush; beneath the sheets, he could feel his bladder letting go. He would have cried out, if he'd had a voice.
He couldn't move his limbs, and he had been bandaged up like a mummy.
He was unable to move, he couldn't scream, but soon enough he drifted back to sleep with piss filled nostrils.
"Come in" A voice called out from inside the door.
Artam was drenched in sweat and the stank of the smell of fear.
He opened the door to the study and entered, bringing a tray of food.
Today it was three brown eggs boiled hard, with fried bread and ham steak and a bowl of wrinkled plums.
He found Gaseic at the window seat, writing.
A familiar crow was walking back and forth across his shoulders, muttering, "Crow, crow, crow." "Put the food on the table," Old priest said.
"'ll have some beer." Artam took the flagon, and filled a horn.
He crushed a lemon in his fist. The juice trickled through his fingers.
The priest drank lemon in his beer every day, and claimed that was why his teeth was as white as milk.
He took the horn from Artam and downed it in one gulp.
When he looked at Artam his eyes were glossy.
"You died a pathetic death. Even after all I did for you?"
Artam's throat was dry.
"Died?"
"Died," the crow echoed. "Died."
"I told you the child was cursed and useless" this time another voice came from one of the corners of the room.
Artam turned and saw him.
A corpse of someone that instilled a dreadful emotion in Artam.
It smiled.
"What? Cat got your tongue?" it chuckled, it's voice coarse and rough. "I told you…there's not much difference between you and the creature that took my leg. Cursed child"
"cursed!" The crows echoed, there were three now and all were unfamiliar.
Artam wanted to run and scream.
But the birds were upon him, tearing his face and picking his eyeballs.
And he screamed, but no sound came out.
Then the nightmares were fragmented, sometimes he'd wake up in the dead of the night in an unfamiliar room, screaming.
When his eyelids fluttered open, he was wrapped in thick linen and floating. He could not seem to move, but that did not matter.
For a time, he dreamed that a kindly maid was with him, tending him with gentle hands. Finally, he closed his eyes and slept.
He slept and dreamt again. The dreams grew even more unsettling, formless and full of strange voices, shouts and cries, and the sound of drums, an audience with a beautiful barbarian warlock who'd appear to be three sisters at some angles.
The next waking was not so gentle. The room was dark, but under the blankets the pain was back, a throbbing in parts of his body that turned into a hot knife at the least motion.
The smell of burnt flesh and the hot searing pain of bone and muscles knitting themselves.
Someone screamed, it sounded like him.
Strange figures would come and treat him. Sometimes he'd spy wraiths among them.
Sometimes he could hear them talking to one another, but he did not understand the words. Their voices buzzed in his ears like wicked mosquitoes on a hot night.
He dreamt he was back in Rupirsk, Other times he'd stand trial under a tribunal of a trio of crows.
Faceless people with watchful eyes turned to follow him as he passed,
"You are cursed" he could hear them mutter, "There is no place for you, Go away." He walked deeper into the darkness.
"Helikos?" he called, "Gasiec?" he whispered. "Forgive me. Please."
But it was only a crow, weak and wounded, spotted with blood, his grey eyes shining sadly through the dark. . .
When he awoke the sky was black outside the arrow slit that served him for a window, The fever was on him, and Artam had no notion of the hour. He was so weak, so damnably weak.
For a moment he'd thought he had completed the journey of the pale mare, and was beyond the veil of death. But there was someone else in the room.
A maid stood over him with a candle.
When she saw Artam open his eyes, she ran off.
'Help me, help' he tried to call, but the best he could do was a muffled moan.
He raised a hand to his face, his every movement pained and awkward. His fingers were stiff.
He was alone. Pushing back the blankets, he tried to sit, but the pain was too much, and he soon subsided, breathing raggedly.
His back and rib cage was one massive ache, and a stab of pain went through his chest whenever he lifted his arm. His right arm was immobile and bandaged, with a stick for support.
'What's happened to me?' Even the battle seemed half a dream when he attempted to think back on it.
'Wait? The battle?' he could scarcely believe he had survived the fall.
Suddenly the door burst open and four persons were standing over him.
One held a lantern. "Welcome back to the world of the living," the tallest of them said brusquely, before chuckling.