Magnar's Sunset
Fantasy short story
Magnar stood on the hilltop, and felt his doom approaching.
The aenori had surrounded him, fangs slavering yellow drool as they stalked in circles around him. The setting sun gleamed on black armour glistening with blood, and chipped weapons clotted with gore. The field of Loc Haemel lay behind and below them, reddened now by the slaughter, and crowned in black smoke. The armies of Freehold and Lanzerac had held there for three days before breaking. The aenori were just too many.
Magnar knew what his doom would be.
Fangs, ripping into his flesh.
Weapons, jagged and lightning-sharp as they slid into his body.
The screaming and thrashing of death.
The mud, and cold, as last light faded.
Magnar knew it all, and despised the inevitability of it.
The first one to rush at him was a slender scout, short sword low and small shield high. It leapt over the carcass of Pelethon, clearing the once-black fur in a single bound, and landed in front of the dead horse with barely a jingle of armour. Two steps, in the blink of an eye, and it was on Magnar. Steel shrieked and armour rang, and then they were apart again, circling. Magnar’s own shield was long lost to the ravages of maces and axes, and the greatsword in his double grip was notched where aenori horns and shield rims had resisted. Mordarion was an ancient blade, and Magnar’s only fear was that his mettle would fail before that of the mighty blade.
Blood dripped from the pommel, and not all of it was the black-green of aenori ichor.
More feet pounding the churned soil, and more scouts began to move in. Magnar feigned at the first one, then spun and whipped the greatsword back at knee level, teeth bared as he put his full weight into the slash. A leg parted behind, spraying ichor, and the aenor toppled back with a hissing scream. A blade clanged off Magnar’s pauldron, and his pivot slammed the pommel of his sword through the cheeks of a leering face that had lunged too close. Teeth and blood burst as the scout stumbled back. Something hammered against his back, shrieking against the plate, and then he was turning, elbow spikes hissing over the head of another scout as it weaved back out of range.
By all the black gods of the east, the creatures were fast.
One of them had a human head impaled on his shield, tongue lolling and jaw flapping as the scout jittered from side to side, and Magnar’s blade crashed into the macabre trophy when he lunged at the dancing aenor. Hair and gristle parted along with wooden shield shards, and the unfortunate Lastlander face that had gaped at Magnar moments before went tumbling into the mud.
Rest, finally, for the poor soul - at least until the next aenori could grab the leaking head.
Magnar spun and slashed, meeting blade and shield at every strike, and his world began to narrow. His sword tip became the north star, pointing out the limit of his world as darkness descended. His heart was hammering away inside his chest, an anvil ringing with the fury of a vicious smith, and each pump of the straining muscle was a blow, a parry, a lunge, a balled fist.
One of the scouts came too close, slipped on the Lastlander’s hair where it was tumbled in the mud, and went down on one knee even as it hacked at Magnar’s legs.
Six feet of Mordarion slammed into the scout, halving it in an instant.
Something behind Magnar crunched into the mail under his left pauldron, piercing skin - and stuck fast when Magnar dropped his arm and spun the other way.
An expression of surprise, and the aenori head was spinning off into the dusk, neck stump pumping ichor.
Two of them rushed him from opposite sides, daggers clutched in yellow claws, and Magnar met them like an oak tree facing the autumn storms. Mordarion impaled the one in an instant, and Magnar was about to turn and hew the great blade back when the impaled aenor screamed, coughing out black-green ichor, and twisted away from him.
Mordarion slipped from his grasp, and the second scout was upon him in a hailstorm of dagger thrusts.
Release me.
The scout was fast. Ungodly fast.
Release me…
Dagger tips slammed into his armour, probing for weakness along the seams and joints. One vambrace raised as a shield to cover his face, right hand scrambling for the shorter Narath at his side. The cousin of Mordarion was a younger blade, a work of silver and bronze from the Cleansed Lands, and burned his hand even through the gauntlet when he finally grabbed it.
Coward! Release me!
Yellow light, thick and buttery, spilled from the shorter blade when Magnar drew it, and the aenor slavering in his face managed a single scream of terror before he grabbed it by the wrist and rammed the blade up through its armpit and into its spine. Bone grated along the blade as he wrenched it back, and the creature was already twitching and turning brown when he kicked it off the blade. The carcass hit the ground and exploded in a burst of autumn leaves, oak and birch and sweetgum leaves spinning into the mud around them. A blast of pollen and night-bloom musk accompanied it, momentarily drowning out the battlefield scents of blood, bowels, and vomit.
The magics of the First People did not care what it feasted on or who wielded it, as long as it could purge those not of the Elven blood.
Magnar blinked, realised that he could finally see the ground again, and spun in a circle to face the remaining aenori. The sun was a bloody disk on the western horizon, sinking into the hills of Loc Thaler and the forests of Toran. Narath hissed and burned in his right hand, steam rising from the back of his gauntlet.
The pain was dim compared to the voice thundering in his head now.
You are nearing death, coward! The witch-blade saps your vitality even as you dither here, and every moment…
The voice cut off as Magnar hurled the silver blade at the nearest aenor.
Then Magnar leapt at the remaining ones, and let the blood inside him change.
It was dark enough, by now.
Finally.
Great description of melee combat.
Ah this makes more sense and makes me feel less bad about my writing 20 years ago!