Chapter 47 (Patreon)

“Saint Maurice, walk with us. If we fall, let me die fighting. If we live, may the women be beautiful and free.” Parker breathed the words through clenched teeth as he ran.

Soft mud sucked at his boots with every stride while a low burn of mana threaded through his legs and back, holding his pace steady as the column ate distance along the narrow strip of ground beside the river. Thirty knights fanned behind him in a loose column, scouts ghosted ahead and to the flanks while ten legionaries labored to keep up, shields slung and faces already streaked with wet earth. He had to slow his pace somewhat to allow them to keep up, but it would be a rough day for them.

Tamra flickered through his mind after the prayer. His mind had been drifting back to her recently, and he didnt know why. He had only had a couple of interactions with her, but…gods, that was a woman.

Branches snapped ahead.

Two scouts burst out of the brush at a low mana-driven sprint, sliding the last few steps through mud as they threw up their hands.

“Screen!” one barked. “Hidden in the trees— right ahead!”

Parker did not break stride.

“Knights, spread!” he barked. “Legionaries with them — kill through and keep moving!”

The formation dissolved at once into practiced chaos. Weapons came free of scabbards with wet whispers while men angled off the narrow march line and plunged into the woodline at a run. Parker felt the tension tighten across his shoulders as he lowered his center of gravity and drove straight toward the dark shapes rising between the trunks.

Goblins erupted from shallow hides and brush blinds with startled shrieks, crude blades and bows lifting too slow to meet the oncoming violence.

Parker hit the first one at full speed.

His shield smashed the creature backward into a tree while his sword punched through collarbone and out the spine of something smaller crowding behind it. He did not pause to see them fall. Mana flared along his calves as he surged forward again, boots slipping once before he caught himself and barreled deeper into the screen.

Around him, the knights carved lanes through the scattered resistance. Wide swings took limbs and weapons together, bodies tumbling aside as the force drove through without stopping to finish the wounded. Legionaries followed in tight pairs, stabbing low and short to clear space, then sprinting to rejoin the forward push.

The goblin screen crumpled in seconds.

Parker burst out of the far side of the brush, breathing hard and grinning like a wolf.

“Keep moving!” he roared, waving them on. “This lot won’t slow the Captain for a heartbeat!”The column burst out the other side with blood on their weapons and barely slowed.

Boots tore through wet grass as the column stretched into a long, fast-moving line along the river’s edge. They ran for hours, and he had needed to slow down and take a break to allow the legionaries to recover some. They had scarfed their rations down while their optio looked gratefully towards Parker.

When they took off again, he ran near the front with the knights spread loose around him, shields slung back, and heavy blades carried low to save their shoulders. Scouts ghosted ahead in bursts of natural and mana-assisted speed, vanishing into the scrub and reappearing again farther down the strip of cleared ground. Garrick had done a good job creating lean men who could ghost and move fast.

The river moved beside them in a wide gray sweep, its current muttering against stone and fallen timber. The water looked fantastic in the summer heat, and they would all have loved nothing more than to get in and relax in its cold embrace. A whistle cut through the damp air.

Scout Optio Sawyer burst out of the brush at a dead sprint, one hand raised flat.

“They're building a blocking position ahead,” he snapped. “The woods tighten against the ban,k and they've built a barricade, but you can breach it.”

Parker smiled and did not slow. “Knights!” he called, voice carrying clean. “Let violence carry the day, Kill!”

Steel slid free in a dozen harsh notes while a couple began to laugh, mana flared along legs and shoulders as the formation loosened into a hunting line, and they looked at each other with wolfish smiles. This is what they trained for, what they lived for. They were made to be the edge of the Legion’s blade. They were its fist and wolves, and finally they had slipped the leash.

The first goblin died without a sound. An arrow sprouted from its throat from a running scout.

A knight crashed through a curtain of low branches and split another creature from collar to hip in one heavy stroke, momentum carrying him forward without breaking stride. Another legionary veered left and drove his blade straight through a shadow that had barely taken shape, wrenching it free as he ran on.

The woodline erupted.

Shapes lunged from behind fallen trunks and shallow pits, crude spears stabbing toward the passing column. The scouts darted through them like thrown knives, cutting bodies with their short swords while shouting brief warnings that never slowed their pace.

“Right side!”

“Two low!”

“Clear!”

Parker barreled straight through the center of it.

A goblin leapt at him with both hands, clawing for his shield rim. Parker drove forward instead of bracing, smashing the iron boss into the creature’s face and feeling bone give under the impact. His sword followed in a short, brutal cut that opened another from jaw to spine before he had even registered the swing.

He did not stop.

Behind him, the knights spread deeper into the trees, each man targeting the first movement he saw and killing it without hesitation. Their blades moved in wide, economical arcs meant for bodies packed too close together to fight cleanly. Mana pulsed through their limbs in cold flashes, letting them change direction mid-stride, step over roots, and drive on.

A horn shrieked somewhere deeper in the brush.

“Let ’em call,” Parker muttered, breath steady. “We’re gone before they know what hit ’em.”

A goblin horn answered him with a ragged scream.

The brush ahead exploded.

Bodies slammed out of the undergrowth in a wild counter-charge, crude blades hacking low for legs while others leapt high to claw at faces and shield rims. Mud sprayed under pounding boots as the running line collapsed into close violence. Knights met the rush in motion instead of bracing, their weapons already rising.

Steel carved space.

One knight pivoted through a full turn and split two goblins in a single sweeping cut that drove him deeper into the press. Another drove forward behind his shield, then slipped sideways with a flash of mana and buried his sword up under a ribcage without breaking stride. They fought with a brutal kind of grace, each movement chained to the next as though the fight had a rhythm only they could hear.

Parker saw the officer at the same moment the creature saw him.

The goblin wore scraps of iron hammered into a breastplate and barked orders through a mouth full of broken tusks, shoving lesser fighters forward while it hung back. Its eyes widened as Parker angled toward it through the chaos.

“Mine,” Parker growled.

He surged.

A goblin lunged across his path. Parker smashed it aside with his shield and drove straight through the gap he had made, sword snapping up in a short thrust that punched into another goblin's chest, and he twisted with a mana driven by his will to hurl the body stuck on his sword at another goblin. He reset and continued toward the panicked goblin officer, shouting. Hot blood burst across his knuckles as his sword sliced through his face, and he ripped the blade free and kept moving as the creature folded.

A thunderous bellow rolled across the clearing.

To his right, the large axe-wielding knight had already seen the troll.

The thing lumbered out from behind a large tree carrying a log as a weapon, its gray hide slick with rain. It bent to scoop up a stone in its other hand.

“Down!” the knight roared at another knight that was in his way.

Two small hatchets flashed from his hands, one after the other, in the same motion. They spun once, twice, then buried themselves deep in the troll’s knee with wet, meaty thuds. The giant howled and dropped hard onto one leg, fingers clawing at the embedded steel.

The knight did not hesitate.

Mana flared along his back and hips as he drove forward, boots tearing trenches through the soaked ground. He twisted his whole body into the swing, weight and power and will all turning together as his axe came around in a clean, terrible arc.

The mana empowered blade sheared through neck and spine in one stroke.

The troll’s head tumbled away into the brush. Its body remained upright for a heartbeat before collapsing with a crash that shook the earth under their feet.

A roar of savage approval broke from the legionaries.

They piled into the remaining goblins with renewed fury, shields slamming forward to create killing space while short swords stabbed and hacked in relentless rhythm. A young soldier slipped in the mud and went down to one knee. The man beside him hauled him upright by the strap and shoved him back into line with a barked curse that carried more pride than anger.

“Finish it!” Parker shouted.

Knights fanned outward in pairs, cutting down anything still moving while scouts darted through the trees to chase fleeing shapes. The clash dwindled into scattered screams and the wet sound of blades doing final work.

Within moments, the woodline fell quiet around them.

Breath rasped through teeth, and someone kicked a dying goblin aside so he could pull his blade free without bending the edge.

Parker wiped his sword on a scrap of hide and rolled his shoulder once before turning back toward his people.

“Good work,” he said, voice carrying just enough to cut through the low muttering.

A knight with blood running down one cheek barked a laugh. “About damn time the captain let us do our job.”

Another slammed his weapon against his shield, grinning like a man who had finally been given a fair fight. “This lot would have given us trouble back in the Verdant Forest. How many died because a troll showed up?”

“I don’t know how you guys can move like that,” one of the legionaries shot back while yanking a javelin out of a corpse. “Why am I even here? You barely needed us.”

That earned a ripple of rough laughter. Tension bled out in short, ugly bursts of humor while men checked straps and shook mud from their boots. One scout crouched beside the fallen troll, prying loose the embedded hatchets with a grunt and tossing them back to their owner.

“Nice throw,” he muttered.\

The knight replied with a wink, catching the weapons and spinning one once before sliding it back into his belt.

Parker let them have it for a moment.

He walked the line slowly, boots sinking into churned earth while he counted heads without looking like he was counting as he tried to think about what this blocking position could have meant. This wouldn't have stopped the Cohort for more than a couple of hours. Unless they had more coming?

“All right,” Parker said at last, louder now. “Enjoy it while you can. That was a screen and a blocking position. Something bigger’s trying to stay hidden, and we’re going to find it and kill it.”

A few of the smiles slipped from the legionaries. The knights only looked more awake.

He jerked his chin toward them as they formed up again, scouts already drifting ahead through the thinning brush. “We’ve got work. Keep pace. Next contact, no more showboating. You had your fun.”

The large axe knight snorted and settled the haft back onto his shoulder. “Just stretching my legs, Primus.”

Parker started forward, calling back over his shoulder. “See those scouts? Professional lot. I’d wager one of ’em can drop you before you even raise that pretty axe.”

“I’ll take that action!” two knights barked at once, while another scoffed loud enough to carry. The optio walking the legionary file glanced over his shoulder with a flicker of concern, like he was trying to decide if this entire detachment had quietly lost its grip on reality.

“Move,” Parker said, breaking into a jog.

An arrow slammed into the mud between the axe knight’s boots with a wet crack, the shaft still quivering.

No one spoke.

Scout Optio Sawyer dropped out of a tall tree to the right as he had simply stepped off a roof. He hit the ground lightly, straightened, and walked forward without hurry. Rain-dark hair clung to his brow. He bent, pulled the arrow free, and wiped the head clean on his sleeve.

Scout Optio Sawyer appeared in a tall tree to the right, jumped down, and walked calmly to grab his arrow. “Y'all think you’re slicker than owl shit. We gots to go.”

He slid the arrow back into his quiver and looked up at Parker like nothing unusual had happened.

Parker’s mouth twitched. Then he started to laugh, low at first, and the sound cracked whatever tension still clung to the group. Knights doubled over. A legionary slapped his shield rim. Even one of the scouts let out a sharp bark of amusement before turning back toward the trees.

The axe knight leaned toward the man beside him and muttered, “Could’ve dodged that.”

Mana-trained ears carried it down the line. “Oh, sure you could,” someone called. “Feet looked real lively just then.”

Sawyer had already started moving again, ghosting into the brush. Parker wiped rain from his face and jerked his chin forward. “Enough. Keep up with him if you can.”

Branches clawed at Parker’s shoulders as he pushed through the wet growth behind one of the scouts. They had destroyed that blocking position a couple of hours back, and they were all tired now. The scout moved ahead in a low, gliding crouch that barely disturbed the leaves, one hand lifting now and then to shape the pace of the men behind him.

Parker's senses were shouting at him the way they used to in the brush and in a different war. Something just wasn’t right.

The scout's fist came up, and the entire line froze.

Momentum died mid-step. A knight hung half-crouched over a root, muscles locked. Parker slipped forward through them and came up beside the scout.

“What’d you find?” he murmured.

Sawyer ghosted out from ahead of them and joined the scout that spotted him. He knelt and used the tip of his finger to scrape a rough shape into the mud between them.

“Three hundred, give or take,” Sawyer said quietly. “Mixed types. Plenty of cutters, some bow boys. Seen a few bigger brutes movin’ with purpose.” He tapped a thicker gouge into the mud. “Trolls too. Haulin’ logs. They buildin’ somethin’ or waitin’ to.”

Parker watched the crude map take form. A shallow dip in the ground ahead, and the tree line is tightening into a funnel. Outlying scratches where Sawyer marked guard posts.

“They’re preparing a nasty fight for the cohort,” Parker said.

Sawyer spat to the side without taking his eyes off the sketch. “They got more comin’. You can feel it. This ain’t the whole pack.”

Another scout shifted behind them. “We could—”

Sawyer’s head snapped around. “You could keep your mouth shut.”

The man swallowed whatever he had been about to say.

Sawyer turned back to Parker, voice dropping even lower. “I can get you boys around their eyes. Quiet-like.”

Rainwater slid from his hair onto the mud map.

“I can get you there, Primus.”

Parker held his gaze for a long heartbeat. Then he nodded once.

“You lead.”

He rose and jerked two fingers. Knights and legionaries drifted in close, forming a tight half-circle under the dripping canopy. Faces streaked with grime and eyes sharp despite the march. Parker looked at optio and judged how ready his boys were for the fight that was coming.

He nodded back to him with a tired look on his face. They were tired, but they would do their duty.

“How many explosives?” Parker asked.

The Legionary Optio answered. “Four.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Parker’s mouth pulled into something that might have been a grin if it had any warmth in it.

“At least that means there will be some left. We’re low on mana, we can’t risk getting stuck. This will be a quick strike, and we fade away.”

A few of the knights chuckled under their breath.

“We hit fast,” Parker continued. He crouched and drew a line across Sawyer’s map with his boot. “Scouts cut the outer posts. We slip into their rear. First targets are the troll and any hobgoblin or officer you can see. Break their head, the body stumbles.”

He looked up, meeting eyes one by one.

“When they start bunchin’ on us, we throw the pots. That buys us space. Then we’re gone. This ain’t a battle. This is a punch to the throat.”

One of the archer knights leaned forward slightly. “Give me a clear lane, and I can take the troll.”

Sawyer scratched his beard. “We’ll get you one.”

Parker nodded. “Do it.”

The men began checking straps and edges with small, efficient motions. Mana flickered briefly along wrists and calves as they primed themselves without wasting strength. No more jokes now.

Sawyer moved. The scouts flowed after him and vanished into the undergrowth as if they had never been there.

Time stretched as they followed, and then Parker saw the first body.

A goblin slumped against a tree trunk ahead, throat opened so cleanly that its head hung at an angle like something poorly carved. Another lay face down beside a shallow pit where it had been watching the approach.

Sawyer reappeared and jerked his chin.

“Gap’s open.”

Parker took a second to look at him and whispered softly, “What all did Garrick teach you in that course of his?”

Sawyer turned back and glanced at him. “Y'all might be the fist the Legion needs. We are the eyes.”

They advanced the last dozen yards bent nearly double, breath slow and measured. Parker eased forward through a screen of wet leaves and finally saw the ambush force.

Goblins filled the low ground ahead in a restless mass. Some squatted, sharpening chipped blades. Others dragged crude bundles of stakes toward a growing barricade of logs. A pair of thicker, iron-bound figures barked orders near the center.

And there — looming above them — the trolls.

They hauled stripped trees across its shoulders like a yoke, mud cascading from its gray hide with every step.

Parker felt something cold and eager settle into his gut.

He drew back from the brush and motioned the leaders close.

“Form up,” he whispered. Steel slid free in a dozen soft sighs.

“We go on my signal.”

A sharp birdcall cut the stillness.

Then the brush in front of them erupted.

Scout bows snapped forward in the same instant. Mana flashed pale along drawn strings as the first volley hissed into the low ground. Arrows punched through crude helms and rag-wrapped throats before the goblins even understood they were under attack. One iron-bound officer staggered backward with a shaft buried to the fletching in his eye. Another tried to shout and folded around the arrow that drove through his open mouth.

“Now,” Parker breathed.

He surged out of the trees.

The knights hit the slope like a falling wall. Mud tore under their boots as mana flared along their legs, turning each stride into a lunging bound that closed distance before the goblins could properly form. The first rank of creatures barely raised their blades before steel carved through them.

A greatsword knight swung in a low horizontal arc that split two bodies and drove a third spinning away in a spray of dark rainwater. Another slammed shoulder-first into a knot of spearmen and cut downward through haft and skull in one brutal motion. Legionaries followed in tight behind them, shields smashing into stunned goblins while short swords stabbed with methodical, practiced violence.

The ambush force convulsed.

Goblins shrieked and surged toward the breach, trampling their own wounded as they tried to bring numbers to bear. Parker drove straight at the thickest point he could see, shield hammering forward to knock a snarling brute off its feet before his blade punched down through its collarbone. He ripped the weapon free and stepped through the falling body without breaking stride.

“Officers!” he roared. “Take their heads!”

To his right, the archer knight planted his feet on a slick rise and drew the great bow back until the wood groaned. Mana crawled in bright veins along his forearms and into the arrowhead.

He loosed.

The shaft tore across the clearing like a thrown spear and slammed into the nearer troll’s cheek with a wet crack. The creature reeled, one massive hand clawing at the protruding shaft as black blood sheeted down its chest.

“Again!” someone shouted.

The archer was already nocking another.

Below him, the axe knight crashed into the second troll’s escort like a man intent on personal ruin. Two smaller hatchets flashed from his hands in quick succession, one sinking deep into the monster’s knee while the other missed, only to sink into a goblin running from behind. The joint buckled with a grinding snap, dropping the troll to one leg, its roar shaking leaves loose from the trees.

He did not slow. Mana flared hard along his spine as he drove forward and twisted his whole body through the upward swing. The edge of the axe met the troll’s throat and tore it out. His mana died as he tried to decapitate it, but his axe got stuck on its spine. A ragged cheer burst from the legionaries nearby as they piled onto the collapsing bulk, blades stabbing again and again to make certain.

Around them, the fight dissolved into a hundred separate killings.

Then the pace began to change.

Mana flickered shorter along the knights’ limbs, the bright surges that had carried them through the first rush thinning into harsher, uneven bursts. Boots slipped deeper in churned mud. Breaths came louder now, pulled hard through clenched teeth. A legionary stumbled while wrenching his blade free and barely caught himself on a shield rim before the next goblin crashed into him.

Parker saw it all at once. They had hit hard enough to break the ambush’s spine, but they had not shattered it. A raw howl tore up from the rear of the goblin mass.

Shapes forced their way forward through their own kind — broader shoulders, scarred torsos smeared with dark paint that ran in the rain like spilled ink. Berserkers. They came on with jagged cleavers and hooked blades, heedless of the arrows punching into their chests as they closed. One seized a knight’s sword arm with both hands and dragged himself onto the edge, biting through leather and flesh before the knight smashed his skull open with the pommel.

The line buckled.

A two-handed sword knight lost footing and went to one knee. Three goblins piled onto him in a heartbeat, hacking wildly. Another knight lunged in with a mana-driven shove that hurled two aside, but his follow-through came slow, the glow along his arms guttering as the effort drained him.

“Back!” someone shouted. “They’re pressin’!”

The goblins felt it.

They surged with a snarling fury that had nothing left to lose. Bodies slammed into shields. Hooks caught rims and wrenched them down. A berserker took a gladius through the gut and kept coming long enough to bury his own blade in a legionary’s thigh before collapsing.

Parker drove forward to plug a widening gap, shield smashing into a painted brute that tried to vault the fallen. His sword punched through its throat, but two more were already there, blades hammering against his guard. The impact jarred up his arm and into his shoulder.

Mana flared —  but it wasn’t enough.

“Legionaries, you’re dry!” he barked. “Knights hold! Hold!”

For three brutal heartbeats, they did.

Steel rang in close, ugly exchanges. No room for wide arcs now. Just short chops, shield bashes, boots grinding for leverage in blood-slick mud. A scout darted through with a knife strike that opened a hamstring and vanished again before the berserker even finished falling.

Another horn blared somewhere in the chaos — goblin this time.

More shapes pushed in from the far side of the clearing.

Parker felt the moment tilt.

“Pots!” he roared. “Pots and fall back!”

Hands moved at once.

A knight yanked an explosive from his belt and hurled it low into the press. The blast tore a ragged hole through the charging bodies and flung shattered limbs across the slope. A second detonated higher up the rise, sending a rain of splinters and screaming goblins tumbling downhill.

“Move!” Parker snarled, already stepping back. “Break contact! On me!”

The withdrawal turned violent.

Knights disengaged by killing their way free — last brutal cuts delivered over shoulders as they shoved through openings the blasts had bought them. Legionaries limped and ran in staggered clusters, shields dragging grooves through the mud. Scouts loosed backward as they moved, arrows snapping into any goblin that tried to close the gap too fast.

A berserker burst through the smoke and tackled one of the rear knights.

Parker pivoted, slammed his shield edge into the creature’s neck, and finished it with a thrust that pinned it to the ground long enough for the knight to scramble up again.

“Go!” he snapped. “You go now!”

They broke from the clearing at last in a ragged rush, lungs burning, mana flickering in dying sparks along calves and wrists.

Behind them, the goblins howled and gave chase for a dozen desperate strides before the last explosive pot shattered the slope in flame and flying earth, forcing them back.