Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 217: Let's Ride

Luding watched the action develop from the utter safety of the western edge of the woods. He was not strong enough to risk himself today – because he'd thrown too much in a single attack. It rankled. But he had thousands of servants to aid him, and today he was spending them like water, his usual caution forgotten.

Many of his servants would have been disturbed to note that he had already decided to use them all if he had to. He knew where more creatures of the Wild could be raised. He himself was irreplaceable. And she was dead.

He had made mistakes, but the end game was going to play out with the inevitability of one of those ancient plays he had once so enjoyed and now could no longer remember.

The king would come and be defeated. That trap was already laid. And then it would all be his.

On the opposite side Wuyi pointed his wedge south and raised his hand.

"Let's ride," he called, and they trotted forward, forming tightly. A perfect target for another burst of power.

His back tingled as he rode away from where he felt his enemy to be, towards the near corner of the Bridge Castle, just two hundred horse-lengths away or less.

The wedge negotiated the trench – last night it had been an inferno – crossing it carefully and wasting precious time. Some men had to dismount.

It was still better than riding the other way around the walls.

Some men jumped it, but most men were less flashy and more cautious. They reformed on the far side, unopposed.

Wuyi rose on his horse. He pointed across the darkening grass toward the near corner of the Bridge Castle.

Wuyi watched the painted nomad man rise from the grass just a hundred horse lengths in front of him, sound his horn, and begin to sprint north, out of the closing jaws of the counter-trap. He watched with a sense of failure and the vaguest professional admiration. He knew the nomads.

He ordered his group to sound "Charge – ahead!"

His line caught a handful of stragglers but, obedient to his orders, the line swept east and south, and didn't deviate to pursue the Nomad.

Arrows flew as the Nomad rearguard gave their lives for their fellows, and one warrior went down in a tangle of armor and dead horse, and then the black-clad warriors from the riverside swept over the rearguard, killing every one of them in an instant, no quarter given.

Master Li Zhang moved past him, raised his hand, and summoned the Lotus order Warriors to him without a word being spoken. It was a magnificent display of power.

Wuyi shook his head. "I thought we were good," he said.

Meiying had blood on her spear tip, and she reined in. Shen was sounding the rally, and a wounded warrior was being hauled bodily onto Yun Ming's horse. She leaned over. "We are good," she said.

To their left front, the whole group of black- and red-clad Warriors went from a galloping charge to a dead stop in a few hoofbeats – then wheeled right around and halted, facing the Bridge Castle in a neat wedge.

Meiying shook her head – not a big motion in armor. "Sweet Heavens. They are good," she admitted reluctantly.

Master Li Zhang cantered to the center of the new line. "Well, Young Master?" he asked. "Shall we relieve the castle?"

Wuyi raised his hand. "At your command, Master Li Zhang." Seventy strong order Warriors made the earth tremble. The Swamplings scattered.

Luding watched in weary anger as his useless allies ran rather than face the Warriors. So many claims – so many boasts that they could fight anything, that they could conquer the Qi warriors and riders.

He watched them run and knew – with the pain of intimate and exact intellect – that his entire plan for the day would come apart.

A burst of power from the field alerted him. The power itself was very low in intensity but also very tightly controlled. Only someone as imbued with mastery as he himself would detect it.

And immediately recognize the wielder. Master Li Zhang of the Lotus order branch of the kingdom.

Luding watched as Master Li Zhang used his power to pass signals to his Warriors – to turn them into finely crafted weapons, responsive to his will. Another man who loved power.

For a moment, he considered using all of his remaining puissance in a single spell to kill Master Li Zhang.

But that was foolish. He needed that power. He reminded himself that there was no hurry. That the king's army would never reach the river.

But the fall of the Bridge Castle would have made all that unnecessary.

Luding rarely spoke aloud. He had no peers to whom he could speak his mind – voice his indecision, his secret fears.

But he turned to his startled guards. The subordinates who worshipped him. The cloud of midge-like followers who attended his every need. His voice came out as a harsh croak, like the voice of a raven.

"Thirty days ago, a demonic sought to take this place from an old woman with no soldiers," he said. "Fate and bad luck have left me to contest it with the King of Tianqin kingdom and whole armies of Warriors, with a dozen able Qi warriors and now with the Lotus order warriors ." He laughed, and his wicked croak startled the birds in the trees. "And yet I will still conquer."

On the side of Wuyi, nothing withstood the Lotus Order charge, and the strong band of Warriors scoured the ground around the Bridge Castle. They rode all the way around it, close against the walls, killing every creature of the Demonic Wild that didn't scuttle clear of their path.

The lesser Swamplings rose in brief bursts of flight or lay flat in the tall grass where they were difficult to find, and the greater Swamplings and Duskreavers, those with armor, struggled into their hastily dug tunnels to emerge in one last spurt of violence to the burning hell of the Bridge Castle courtyard.

Wuyi raised his hand for his group to halt when they returned to the base of the soft earth ramp that the worker-Swamplings had run up to the curtain wall on the north side of the Bridge Castle.

"Dismount!" he called. The sun was past noon but still high. There were streaks of cloud in the west, but hours of daylight remained. Still, experience told him that if he didn't clear the courtyard before full dark, he would lose the Bridge Castle. And thus lose his connection to the king. If the king was coming at all.

"Spears!" Wuyi called, and his men formed a tight line at the base of the ramp; strong warriors in front, normal warriors, and archers in the rear rank.

Master Li Zhang rode up and cupped his hands. "We'll cover you!"

Wuyi cupped his hands after taking a heavy spear from Jia. "If we aren't out before full dark," Wuyi said, "Assume the bridge is lost."

Master Li Zhang crossed himself. "Heavens go with you, Young Master."

"Heavens don't care," Wuyi said. "But it's the thought that counts. On me!" he called and started up the slope of new-turned earth. It was damp and hard – hardened with something excreted by the Swamplings.

There were fifty Swamplings on the wall, and they died when the warriors ripped through them.

Wuyi looked down into the inferno of the courtyard. All the merchant wagons were afire, and the courtyard crawled with figures like the damned in hell – men stripped of their skin, shrieking their lungs out; armored Swamplings in glowing, fire-lit white.

Most of them crowded to the door of the nearest tower, but more poured from a gaping wound in the earth where a dozen arrows had been hurled aside, like maggots in a bloated corpse when it is opened. More Swamplings on the walls – but on the east wall, a small, disciplined group fought back to back, holding the opposite curtain against assault from both directions.

"From the right!" Wuyi called and led his men down off the curtain wall – down the ramp intended for siege engines to be hauled up to the curtain, and there were a pair of pale Swamplings gleaming there, each with a pole-axe.

He had no time for finesse. He raised his spear, point low and butt high, and caught the first creature's heavy cut on his haft – wrapped its arm with his own in the high key that men practiced when wrestling in armor – and then ripped its arm from its body like a man ripping a crab leg from a newly-cooked crab.

The thing's other arm came at him – he rammed his spear point into its head, let go of the shaft with his armored left hand, and punched into the Swampling's throat. Its great maw opened, mandibles flashing at his mask – overhand, he rammed the spearhead down its gullet, and acrid ichor blew out of the top of it like lava from a new volcano.

"Front Line!" he roared, even as Meiying beheaded the second armored Swampling with her axe.

Yun Ming came up on his left, and Meiying cleared her weapon and fell in next, tapping her axe-haft against the breastplates of Yun Ming and another warrior, and the line was formed.