Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

"Screaming Cavalry left flank!" I bellowed, pointing my sword to the nearest mass of feral humanity pouring down the hill-face just to the left of Dreadwolf's gray banner and the iron carriage beneath it.

River made to kick her horse forward but I was close enough to grab her horse bridle and hold her here. I couldn't give orders to everyone all at once and the next few heartbeats were perhaps the most important of my life.

"The rest of you! Right flank!"

I swung my sword from the twenty or so once-bandit cavalry scattered behind us, and they quickly formed up to charge past us.

Now, I turned to River. "Call them," I said, flatly.

She looked at me for a moment but I didn't have time to argue.

"I said I'd give everything to stop Dreadwolf! We have that chance now! Summon your Mandate, damn it!"

She held my gaze, then in a violent motion she threw off her helmet so I could see her face one last time. Her hands were bunched on the reins but with an effort she held them out to me.

"Get us as close as you can," she said, voice carefully cold, "And then turn and run as far as you can."

I nodded. We both knew damned-well that second part wouldn't happen, but I allowed her the last ditch hope. I sheathed my sword and collected her reins.

She threw her sash around her saddle horn and tightened it – effectively tying herself in – and then nodded at me. I watched as her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell forward onto the neck of her mount, seizing.

"Fly!" I kicked Winsheard into a full sprint, leading River's mount behind me even as River herself lost all control, convulsing atop the mount she had lashed herself to.

There was no one left to answer my cry. The last of the Screaming Cavalry crashed into a seething wall of crazed human bodies. The things that had once been the people of the City of Lanterns fell upon the men and horse. They seemed not to care how many of their fellow madmen my cavalry cut down or trampled. Fingernails and teeth raked against silver armor and barding, but eventually the incalculable weight of thousands of human bodies overwhelmed the twelve white horse, pulling the powerful beasts down along with the furiously fighting men atop them. Blood and viscera shot up and I saw more than a few crazed citizens holding chucks of horse or man-flesh in their hands or ragged strips hanging from their teeth.

To my right the same thing happened a moment later, only the twenty or so faster, lighter horse launched themselves deeper into the masses, turning the attention of the crazed-animals-that-had-once-been-human inward before they swarmed like ants atop dying caterpillars, a horse head thrashing up for a moment to show through the tearing, clawing limbs, a sword arm still rising and falling through clawing hands even as the doomed man that held the blade was torn to pieces.

I realized – as Windshear thundered over that last stretch of gravel toward the trail where even now the Gray Wolf banner flew – that I hadn't ordered my cavalry into the lines of feral citizens to stop them or to hold them, or even to fight them. I had ordered them to use their horses and their own bodies as bait.

I didn't have time to think about it.

Windshear coarse over the last stretch toward Dreadwolf's cart – the last bastion of a man who had held the Empire hostage – with a desperate speed even as River writhed backward in her own saddle, throwing her face to the sky and groaning like the dead.

Some of the feral humans spilled out in front of me, but even as I thundered past them, I could see in my periphery that black shadows flitted out from the corners of my vision to wrap themselves around the crazed people. Those once-human creatures stopped and shuddered at the touch of the abyssal demons.

I pressed my head into Windshear's mane, trying not to think about monsters all around me, trying to urge him onward to the completion of our quest before one thing or another took me.

As I made the gorge in the far end of the stone bowl that had been our battlefield and the site of our slaughter, I could finally make out some detail of the men that stood before Dreadwolf's armored cart, his standard – no, the standard – of Dreadwolf's high command, of the head of the Gray Wolf clan, flapping chaotically above them.

Something was not quite right about those last three soldiers before Dreadwolf's mobile fortress. These were the last men to defend Dreadwolf? These were the wolves who would not abandon their Prime Minister, despite everything they had just witnessed? They didn't look stoic or resolute. They didn't even look elite. They looked like frightened farmers in Gray Wolf armor.

Being frightened wasn't strange though. It was the way they moved, the way they jerked in place almost as if… they were bound in place.

As Windshear hurtled across the last few hundred span with River's horse in tow, I could finally see that these men were indeed not postured for battle. Their hands were clasped before themselves, trailing short chains that trailed beneath their feet, affixed in place by tent-spikes driving deep into the scree. The two that had run away must have succeeded in pulling theirs out, and the last three were trying desperately to as well.

The sword in their hands were bound there by hide strips and even as I watched more of the feral beasts that had once been the citizenry of the City of Lanterns poured down the slopes of the narrow trail and fell upon the restrained men, like alligators on a bait-ball. One of the men knew it was hopeless to try to fight off so many, and turned his sword upon himself, falling on it to drive the blade into his own throat rather than face the clawing hands and gnashing teeth of the pack of feral men and women.

Cut off on both sides, I pulled Windshear into a tight circle, herding River's horse to a stop since I couldn't saw on the reins for her.

I looked around desperate for an escape. Or short of that, some way to make my death count for something.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Dreadwolf's cart was indeed weighed down. Masses and masses of gold, jade and pearl, and all manner of other stolen valuables poured from the open door of his cart. But there was no one within. No one alive at least, or the first wave of feral creatures would be clawing at them just as they clawed at me and River and the poor chained souls in front of us.

My sword lashed out at any that made it through River's randomly swirling abyssal demons.

The Prime Minister who held the court hostage and the commander of the wolves who held the nation hostage was not here.

But he wouldn't leave his wealth and his banner unprotected. He was too greedy for that. And he would not have laid a trap, with the expectation that it would wipe out one of his competitors, without staying to witness their humiliation and his domination. He was too prideful for that.

I remembered a scene from what felt like so long ago, of the Gray Wolf banner flying high above a yellow plain, while the foot-soldiers in gray were crushed between a million rebels and a sheer cliff.

I made another turn with Windshear and River's horse behind, black phantoms swirling around us, sucking away what little life was left in those half-human monsters even as more of the stragglers drew down upon us.

Where was the vantage? Where could Dreadwolf watch his horrible plans unfold, laughing and toasting with his inner circle as he did so?

Layer upon layers of hills unfolded to either side of the trail like the furrows in a giant's fields ready for planting and somewhere far below there was the valley that marked those mortal fields ready for planting. A narrow canyon called the Coffin Gate would separate what was once the western edge of Oxfields from the beginning of Wolfswood.

It would be the right place for Dreadwolf to hole up but I couldn't see it from here.

My Son-of-Heaven Saber cut through another frenzied citizen even as an abyssal demon flitted toward it to claim it for the drowned souls. There was a chilling moment where I thought the wraith-like figure, upon being denied, would turn its attention to me instead but with so many others to choose from, it flitted toward another of those afflicted by the Rabid Dog Mandate.

With the abyssal demons, my luck was running out. And with the rabid citizens, I was running out of time, as more began to trickle over the hills to either side of me, and the ones behind were nearing the end of their feast and turning their attention to more lively game. I couldn't keep spinning in place for-

Finally, by pure chance, I looked up and saw him. If I had been alone and unharried, I might have methodically scanned the hilltop and identified the unnatural shape atop of one. It was little more than an old squat fort, a watchtower really, sitting atop a hill and overlooking the pass that led from one capital to another. It had been pure luck that I had spotted it, as there were no banners flying above it, no torchlight to catch my eye.

The immense armored wagon sitting in the middle of the road had both. It blazed with a torch on each corner and the banner flying above it was as large as a man. It was impossible to miss. It was the bait and I had taken it.

But somehow I knew that this dark watchtower far in the distance was where Dreadwolf would be watching, drinking with his generals and advisors, patting each other on the back for a well sprung trap, no matter that it had cost the entire population of the City of Lanterns and the Demon's crack troops besides. They would be laughing now at how I had just sacrificed my own life, and the life of all of my men for a shot at… nothing.

My ears rang with anger at being so outplayed yet again. My vision swam with darkness at the injustice of it all. My heart hammered in my chest with how badly I wanted him dead.

If I was just a little more. If I just had an inkling of power. If I had even the barest gift from Heaven to call down and make the difference.

I hacked down savagely at the trio of crazed citizens that assaulted the flanks of my mount. And Windshear brained another with a buck and a kick. He was thrashing underneath me now, but I savagely reined him in and levelled my bloodied blade at that dark shape in the distance that I knew must house Dreadwolf. Perhaps it was only the imagination of a doomed man that I thought I could feel him pause in his gloating and revelry to lock eyes with me over a distance of a dozen li or more of darkness.

I had not outplayed him with politics. I had not toppled him with plots. I could not beat him with force of arms. Not any longer, not in my state and with my army consumed by the masses. All I had left was vitriol. All I could do was curse him in the name of everything I held sacred, though I knew none of it would mean a wink to him.

"COWARD!" I roared hopelessly across the distance. And than slashed my sword all around me again and again at the dozens that now closed in. River's swarming shadows redoubled their efforts, but there were five rabid creatures for every drowned shadow. I lifted my sword again when I realized fighting was hopeless now.

"Now that you've started running, Dreadwolf. You'll never stop. Now that you've shown your colors, you'll never find peace, even in death. Damn you, Dreadwolf. Damn you! In the name of-"

I never got to say my piece. Not in its entirety at least.

For even though I had given myself up for dead, either at the hands of the rabid citizens or by the will of River's shadows, Windshear was not so convinced.

As the first of the cracked and jagged fingernails dug into his hide, he reared up, hooves no doubt crushing the bones of any before him.

I, for my part, was flung from his back, unprotected head crashing to the stony ground.

Darkness overcame me.

I moment later, or perhaps an eternity, I found that I was clawing through the bloody, filthy legs of rabid citizens based on pure instinct. Fingers tore at me, even as my crawling hand found my Son-of-Heaven Saber. I lashed out blindly.

The darkness pushed in again.

I found myself stumbling over bodies. To where? I had no idea. I wasn't thinking. I was just moving. I saw Windshear bolt, leading River and her horse up out of the hordes of humanity, shadows still swirling around her to thin the masses. His hooves churned the hillside as he dove up the slope. Then the three of them all disappeared into the hills beyond. Good.

My vision fluttered.

My hands clasped around iron bars on Dreadwolf's wagon and I pulled myself upward to place a foot on a windowsill, throwing myself onto the wagon's roof.

The creatures followed suit and I swung my blade stupidly, taking one in the neck and then plunging it through another as they fell on top of me.

The weight crushed me to the top of the wagon. I had not the strength to fight them anymore as one creature gurgled not half a span from my throat and the other thrashed around my skewering blade, pinning my chest. I had not the strength to even move with such weight atop me. As the swarm of corrupted humanity coursed around the wagon like a river around a rock, I didn't care what they did to me.

This was it. This was how my story would end.

Darkness consumed me for the last time.

***SPARROW'S MISSION UPDATE: RACE TO THE CITY OF TOMBS***

FAILED Primary Objective: Stop Dreadwolf before he reaches the City of Tombs.

FAILED Secondary Objective: Kill the Demon himself, and capture as many of his men as possible.

FAILED Bonus Objective: Kill Dreadwolf himself.

FAILED Fail Condition: The Coalition fails to reach Dreadwolf in time or is pushed back out of the passes.

ENEMY SLAIN: 3,859 | ENEMY CAPTURED: 0 | LOSSES: 1,144

OVERALL GRADE: X (Utter Rout)