The wyldemen crested the last, low rise and came spilling over it in an uncontrolled frenzy. They loped like animals rather than running as a man, their limbs stretching to their limits for every inch of ground, their arms flailing wildly to propel them forward and stay upright. The braying, coming from their goat-like faces, seemed to be an almost instinctual thing - none of them raised their faces to the sky like wolves howling to the moon. They simply breathed in great bellows, and their exhales thundered somewhere between the scream of a man and the panic of a spooked donkey.
Most of them were naked, though a few wore the trappings of stolen garb from victims I pitied. Any cloth about them were rags, hanging by threads, and while there was a distinction in gender between the things, their coverings were indiscriminate.
They brayed, and charged towards us mindlessly.
“Hold,” Gresham called, sensing someone on the far end of the line was thinking of breaking ranks. I had to assume it would be the squire.
We were sat on our mounts, a line of six cavalry against what, half again a dozen? Twenty? If this were some rabble of bandits we might have simply risked the charge, but these things, these twisted forms of beast and man… who knew what their overpowering fury could withstand?
Behind us, driving hard, Giddy, Morio and Sir Zeklan’s footman Braice were each trailing trains of horses securely tied together. They were riding as hard as the long trains, and the burdened packhorses, could allow but until they were out of sight I couldn’t expect the wyldemen to just forget about them.
“How did they get here?” Sir Constance muttered, her voice tinny behind the sealed helm and gorget of her plate. “We’re what, six hundred miles or more from the Wylde proper? And that’s across the Tolltine river.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Cultists, perhaps. Or some fucking wizard using magic where it isn’t wanted. Or the Empire.”
She turned sharply, glaring at me through the slit in her visor. “You think the Empire would seed the Wylde in the Kingdoms?” she scoffed. “That’s insane.”
So that’s where she’s from, I thought. I hadn’t been able to place her accent.
“I’ve seen what the Empire thinks of the Free Kingdoms,” I said. “I suggest not bringing it up around my footwoman though.”
“Soon, hold,” Gresham said again.
Sir Zeklan echoed him, hefting his lance, eager for the charge.
I patted the pommel of my sword, and then my rondel, then adjusted my grip on my lance. I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead underneath my helm. I rolled my neck, the one good thing about not having a proper plate gorget, and felt a satisfying pop of released pressure.
“Now,” I said, and we leaped into motion.
At two hundred paces we broke into a gallop, and the oncoming mob of braying wyldemen put on speed. They could smell us now on the wind.
At one hundred paces the man-at-arms split from the Lancers, still riding towards the enemy but banking slightly right as we banked left.
At fifty paces I spurred forward, taking the lead, as Constance and Zeklan fell in behind me into a wing pattern, slightly staggered.
At twenty paces I lowered my lance. I could see the whites of the wyldemen eyes, each one peeled so far open it was like they were trying to taste the air with their eyeballs. Their pupils were dilated wide, but they were odd rectangles, blocky like a goat. I could see that some of them weren’t just flailing with their clawed hands, but were holding weapons, or pieces of them. An axehead with no shaft. Sticks. One was simply carrying a big rock over its head in two hands.
At ten paces I picked my target, a particularly big and ugly fucker that was just righting itself from a near-stumble that would have put it under the pounding bare feet and hooves of it’s fellows. It stood up, looking at my lance from inches away.
I struck, my lance driving clear through its head and punching into something else behind it, and the weapon was pulled from my grasp as I steered Castor away from direct impact, galloping at full tilt along the southern edge of the mob. I ripped my sword from its sheath, the blue-grey of the godsteel blade a flash in the afternoon sun as I raked it blindly to my right in a wild swing, feeling it bite into the bare flesh of the enemy as they tried to arrest their forward momentum and turn to meet us. As quickly as I had struck, I was beyond. I wheeled Castor, feeling his powerful frame react to the squeeze of my knees, the touch of my heel and the tug of his reins.
A glance behind me showed that Constance and Zeklan had both left their lances behind as well, and hadn’t been lost or pulled down into the mob. We had skirted the wyldemen, carving a wound into the mob’s flank, while the men-at-arms had headed north, away from our fleeing baggage train and drawing the opposite side of the enemy away.
The mob was in chaos - there was blood in their midst, and it was like their instincts demanded that they both chase their prey, but also feast.
Half of their number, about ten, were pelting hard in their chase of the man-at-arms. Gresham was busy wheeling the three of them back around, having outpaced the wyldemen at a gallop, but we Lancers had a better advantage than a direct charge. I lifted my sword to signal Constance and Zeklan, and then lowered it at a diagonal and slashed down. Pushing Castor to fade right, we closed quickly with the chasing wyldemen and then cut across their path from behind. In truth, Castor did more damage than I could hope to. Even without his battle barding, he was trained to protect himself and me, and at speed he managed to still lash out with his iron-shod hooves and bite, before trampling the fallen underneath his weight. For my part I added to his fury, swinging low and slashing my sword into the neck of one of the wyldemen as it turned to try and leap at us, careful not to stab and lose my sword to the pull of momentum.
Constance and Zeklan followed, and by the time I was ready to weave back around again the man-at-arms were charging forward, trampling through the final two of the frontrunners and leaving them broken in the dirt as they headed towards the sparse following that were still standing.
Gresham, Ethelmeir and the squire Taldrin went about their business efficiently, easily able to ride down the scattered remnants of the mob and then trampling the wounded with a vicious pass where we had made our initial charge.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Sir Zeklan said, doffing his helm as he pulled up his warhorse next to me.
“It’s not over,” I said, shaking my head.
“What do you mean?”
The braying began, behind us somewhere to the north and west, back the way we had traveled. And then another, ahead in the direction of the far copse of trees that our Archers had gone to hunt.
I grimaced. “They don’t travel in one big mob. And now they can smell blood in the air.”
