In the heart of the Great Forest, nothing is as it should be. Sir Vladisal and her Knights of Boska are lost and far from home. The son of their Duchess has been kidnapped, spirited away to a nameless place within these dark and endless woodlands. V...
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Üban's heart hammered as she followed her captain down the slope.
Sword in hand, the old knight's eagerness to cleave head from neck filled her ears with the rushing of blood. Behind her, the Knights of Boska echoed Vladisal's battle cry, and the sound of the charge drowned out bestial moaning made by the unholy merging of corpses and forest life. Yet, as she neared the fray, Üban's battle-lust became tinged with despair.
Vladisal had gone too far ahead. She stormed the cluster of tree-demons as if she could best them all singlehandedly. She hacked and slashed, sending her foes scattering in all directions. By the time Üban and the rest of the women met their enemy, a line of monsters stood between them and their captain.
"Volley!" Üban bellowed.
From up on the ridgeline, archers loosed arrows. Barbed heads hissed into the clearing, thudding into rotten limbs and wooden shells of the ghoulish horde. But the monsters paid no mind to their injuries, and they shambled headlong into the charge, seeking only the taste of blood.
"Aim for the heads!"
The next volley found more success. Three monsters collapsed to the ground, skulls punctured, roots thrashing in death throes. One, a young woman, had the shaft of a crossbow bolt protruding from her eye.
Üban felt a fresh surge of anger and frustration as she joined the fight and took the head from an elderly man's shoulders. She had not given the second order; it had come from Abildan, and Üban again wondered why Vladisal tolerated her presence. The assassin was a feliwyrd, a sorcerous merging of human and mountain cat, and such creatures were not to be trusted.
A third volley downed four more monsters, but the army of tree-demons was so great in number now that it hardly made a difference. The Boskans were a band of five archers and less than twenty knights facing a horde that just kept growing.
Üban roared. Another foe fell.
The roots wrapped around the torsos of the tree-demons were strong and hard, but those that lashed from their mouths like the tongues of serpents were pulpy and rotten as their exposed flesh. Üban chopped the roots from the mouth of a monster so vile and emaciated that age or gender were impossible to tell, but two more appendages slithered from the rotten maw to replace them. With a grunt, Üban lopped the monster's head from its shoulders. All about, the Knights of Boska slew their enemy with little resistance. Body after body fell in an endless wave of slaughter, but only a killing blow to the head could deaden their roots and hunger, and extinguish the lights in their eyes. The noise of the battlefield was not that of usual combat; only the thuds of metal on flesh and wood filled the clearing. Üban redoubled her efforts, cleaving a path towards Vladisal.
To her right, mighty Dief crushed skulls and cracked bones with her huge hammer, her teeth gritted, her strength tireless. To Üban's left, graceful Luca sliced flesh with a sabre in one hand, and split wood with a hatchet in the other.
"There must be three-score of them at least!" Luca shouted, decapitating the grim vision of an old woman. "And still more arrive!"
For every monstrosity they slew, the forest spat out a replacement.
"At this rate we'll be fighting till dawn."
"Let them come," Dief grunted, swinging her hammer. "All the more to send back to the hells."
But it wasn't that simple.
Whatever curse had merged their dead bodies with the forest, these monsters had once been simple village folk. They were innocent victims compelled from the grave by a dark magic.
Üban stepped back as Dief swung a murderous blow with her hammer. The head of a peasant man disappeared into a wet mist.
A small girl, no more than a babe, came at Üban. Her eyes luminescent, she reached out as if searching for safe arms to nestle in. She made a choking, gurgling sound. Roots thrashed in her mouth like trapped snakes fighting to be free. With a silent plea to the Mother God, Üban thrust her blade into the girl's mouth, and twisted. The top of her head flipped open like a bloody hatchway, and she fell, roots coiling in her remains.
A scream split the night air.
The sheer volume of monsters prevented Üban reaching Vladisal, and she began to panic.
"Flanks!" she commanded. "Draw out the centre!" And her blade passed through yet another decayed neck. "We must fight through to Vlad," she told Dief and Luca.
"I see her," Dief replied. "She's surrounded."
"Wait," said Luca. "No!"
Üban felt a knot in her gut. At the clearing's centre, Vladisal had fallen, and the tree-demons were upon her.
"To Vladisal!"
The call blazed through the knights of Boska like frenzied fire.
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