The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [2]
Two weeks later, Lhesh Haruuc wasn’t smiling. He swung his sword and the magnificent weapon—more than an armslength of heavy battle-scarred steel, sharp as death on one side, jagged as a dragon’s teeth on the other—split a human warrior almost in two. It wedged against a rib and he had to kick at the corpse to free the weapon. “You didn’t say these people were so stubborn!” he said.
Fenic’s shield swept past him, blocking a blow from another human. His shava’s sword cut the legs out from under the man. “This place was your idea,” Fenic answered. He grunted as he slammed the edge of his shield down to crush the injured man’s skull and end his life. “They’re not usually stubborn. The conquest has filled the town with refugees. They’re fighting because they don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Haluun, Haruuc’s brother by both the sword and birth, laughed. “They can go to the fields and the mines! My wife has the chains ready!”
“That’s what they’re afraid of,” said Fenic.
Haruuc paused to shake the blood from his sword and look around the square of the Cyran frontier town. There were nearly as many banners showing in the fight for this one town as there might be in a far larger battle—a deliberate choice. When his new city rose, there would be warriors in almost every clan who would be able to say they’d fought with the lhesh to make it happen. What should have been a swift strike, however, had turned into a long day’s battle. Fenic was right. Refugees had packed the town, and desperation had given the humans courage. They’d made an effort to fortify the town, throwing up barricades in the streets and setting traps and ambushes. They’d seldom stood to fight but had retreated to alleys and rooftops to harry their attackers with arrows and stones.
Haruuc had the foresight, though, to buy the services of the goblins of the sharaat’khesh. The Silent Blades wouldn’t normally have waded into an active battle, but he’d promised them and their cousin clan, the Silent Wolves, a place in his new city if they wanted it, and that had earned him their favor. A handful of the slippery goblins had easily cleared the rooftops in places where the town’s defenders had trapped his regular troops.
The barricades in the streets, cunningly placed to keep the attackers away from the town’s center, had been more of a problem—at least until Haruuc had called on the brute strength of the bugbears among his troops. Hobgoblins were broader and more powerful than humans, but bugbears, largest of the goblin races, were broader, taller, and more powerful still, standing shoulders and shaggy head above most hobgoblins. Arming his bugbears with battering rams fashioned from logs and beams, Haruuc had broken right through the walls of the town’s houses to make his own streets. The bugbears’ big ears—stiffer and less expressive than a hobgoblin’s—had quivered at the simple joy of wanton destruction.
The closer Haruuc’s troops got to the center of the town, though, the fiercer the resistance had become. Anyone among the townspeople who could hold a weapon had fought, with just enough experienced fighters and battle-trained mages among them to inflict some damage. When the attackers finally reached the town square, they found townspeople and refugees crowded into ranks, and the fighting had begun in earnest.
What puzzled Haruuc was why they were fighting instead of fleeing. Masses of them could have escaped—the Ghaal River protected the north side of the town from direct attack, but it hardly prevented flight. Then for a moment the battle parted before him and he saw the reason.
The human who strode across the far side of the battlefield, here and there plunging his sword into the fighting, must have been the lord of the town. His shield was painted with an elaborate crest, and the armor that he wore was good. What captured Haruuc’s attention, however, was his helmet. It looked old, but the plume of feathers that crowned it rippled and shone like fire. Wherever the lord went, swinging his sword alongside his people and urging them to fight