The battle had raged for days and days, under moon-bright night and sun-scorched day. Air-splitting weapons were the first to stir chaos and death in the assault. Men slumped over stone parapets, arrows and spear shafts sprouting from their bodies like reeds. The dead lay silent; the dying lay ready to follow their sword-brothers. In the sedge about the battle-focused stone-walled keep and village, green grass was painted crimson. Brown mud turned to thick pools of reddish gore. Groaning soldiers fought in light armor, mail shirts and leggings, stained with dirt and blood. Their muscles and minds, battle-weakened, were fatigued.

Encased in armor turned glistening red from battle, one ferocious man-ferocious for he stood lone against his adversary-fought near the entrance to the gray-stoned keep. He battled before the battered gate with sword in hand, his body pierced all about with arrows and several broken spear shaft. Though sprouting from him like thin appendages, the evil warrior did not bleed from these deadly quills. With much arrogance, he smiled through his steel helm; the tip of his wide nose and grinning mouth the only features visible. His chin dripped with blood-mingled muck and he often casually wiped it away as he called out curses against his opponents. He waved his blade about as his foe continued to spring from the gate. He lopped heads and hands and arms from his adversary. He hacked into the soft sides of men, cleaving great furrows into flesh and bone. He laughed while he struck at his enemy; he parried their swords, knocking away the one's that came close to his head.

Hanging at his throat was a pendant. The pendant was silver and untarnished from battle. It shone in the red sun like a diamond, twinkling like a tiny star. On its surface were an ankh-the symbol of life-and four arrows. The heads of the arrows pointed away from engraved emblem; shafts bowed almost in half as if the ankh had turned them away.

The bodies piled up and the one warrior who stood atop the dead and dying continued to laugh and howl as if some possessed beast from the pits of Hades.
"Come now! Is that all you've got?" he bellowed, waving his sword, and throwing his arms open wide, taking several fresh arrows in the chest yet being felled by none. "Come now, come now! Bring your bravest out to greet me…to greet the great Sarpedon!"

There were a dozen men left atop the keep wall. Two in particular stood peering down at the madman before the blood-smeared and body-steeped gate.
A dark-maned man in brown leather tunic and dun-colored breeches stood atop the wall, his bowstring quivered from the recent arrow he had sent into the one-man-army below. Brushing beads of sweat from his furrowed brow, he snarled and reached for the final arrow that hung in a leather and ostrich-feather sheath behind his back. He knew he would have to make this last shaft count.

"Mallory, I think our time grows short," the archer said to his companion who stood beside him; his friend's own bow and quiver empty at his back.

"Why doesn't he simply enter and stop taunting us. He must know he nearly has single-handedly taken the keep," Mallory said brushing his sweaty blond locks from his eyes. He turned and told a few men beside him, the few who had families within the fortress, to return to their loved ones. There was nothing they could do but protect their families as best they could when the madman entered the fortress.
There came a heavy thunk, a pain-filled cry and a blood-choked gurgle below their perch. Another man fell to the fiend at the gate.

"It is up to us now, my friend. I think I know our foe's weakness. I just need one clean shot," the archer said as he nocked the lone arrow and positioned his bow back in the crenel. "I think the pendant at his throat protects him from damage. He savagely protects the exposed areas of his face which I surmise may not be veiled by the item's magic. If a man could simply knock that barbarian's helm from his head…"

Mallory peered over the wall seeing another keep-defender succumb to Sarpedon's blade. To take the fallen man's place, two other valiant fighters slip-stumbled up the body pile.

"Patroclus, you must make that shot count," Mallory said to the archer as he stepped to the stone stairway that led down to the ground. He breathed in heavily as if he might be filling his lungs for the last time. His hand rested on the hilt of his sheathed sword.

"What are you doing?" Patroclus said lowering his bow and looking to his friend.
Mallory's sword slid with a grating hiss from its scabbard. "I am going down to knock the beast's helm from his head. Maybe I will get lucky and the head will come with it."

"No. It is suicide. Plus you have wife and newborn. They need you more than that foul knight needs another body to bloody," the archer said relaxing the bowstring. He let the bow droop the more, beginning to ready it to be put aside. A sword hung at his hip and he would not let his friend waste his life and make his wife a widow. Patroclus only had himself to live for. That was enough, but his friend's life meant more. "Let me go and have a tryst with the man."

"I am as clumsy at the bow as you are with sword. There is no better with sword than I." Mallory's words were not boastful but bore full truth. "I will go and smite the man's helm from his head and you will take the shot. We will see if a shaft sprouting from his forehead gives the monster pause enough to find the gates to a fiery afterlife."

Frowning but resigned in accepting his friend's decision, Patroclus armed up his bow again. His heart-anxiety weighted-beat heavy in his chest.

"Trust me, my friend," Patroclus said, swallowing his concern and tending to task. "I will make the kill before he lifts his blade towards you. If you can make him focus on something other than the fight for a moment, I assure you, our brothers who have fallen will not have died in vain."

The blond-haired warrior did trust Patroclus. They had been friends for years and the archer had NEVER failed him; the man could dead-on hit the small white center of a sliced red radish two bowshots away. Still, Mallory grunted in mock-disgust at his friend's ambition, then gripped his sword the firmer and trudged down the steps.

Patroclus lowered his bow for a quick instant, arrow still nocked and held tightly by middle and index finger, and waved off the two other archers who lined the wall. He pointed at a lone man gripping a spear and raised his palm to have him hold and not cast another lance. They must save their weaponry in case the plan did not work. The wall grew quiet except for sword-clangs and the death cries of the men falling at the feet of the lone warrior below.

"Is this all you have for me? Is there no one else?" Sarpedon yelled, throwing his arms out again but no shafts greeted him.

Mallory appeared and ran up the slippery red ruin of bodies. He stumbled and dropped to one knee but quickly rose and continued his gruesome ascent. "I am here, you cursed rambler! Meet your death!"

Steel met and rang like the peel of small bells. The air split and hissed as blades sought purchase of soft flesh. Mallory fought like a man possessed, seeming to fight an enemy with equal diabolic possession if not moreso. He struck again and again at Sarpedon, but with no luck for the dire fiend seemed as skilled a fighter as the keep-knight. Every sword thrust was parried, and every parry guarded against sword thrust.

"Are you the last man they send? Are you their greatest warrior?" Sarpedon said raising his sword and deflecting a direct slice to his head.

"I am the last man you will battle today." Mallory replied. He said that one thing, but his thoughts said something else…he couldn't best this man. Every swing and every jab, all the moves he used, every device in which he had been trained in battling with cold blue steel, seemed to be nothing to the madman before him. His arm tired. His muscles ached. His mind drifted to other things…being done with this impossible battle and returning to wife and son.

Sarpedon's laughter snapped Mallory from his daydreaming. The warrior's focus returned to the porcupine-like man in the same instant the vermin's sword tip dove into the gap between his chestplate and abdomen.

Mallory's legs buckled and his weapon flailed in weak sweeps. The tip of his sword grazed Sarpedon's exposed cheek, drawing a thin line of blood-though the madman hardly noticed in his glory-feast. The blond warrior gasped, sinking to the stinking pile of corpses, life fleeing fast and his dead comrades below whispering for him to join them.

"Ha! So much for your greatest warrior!" Sarpedon bellowed, pulling the sword from his victim. "Send to me four asses laden with as much gold as they can carry and I will be away and never bother you again."

Upon the parapet, tears rolled down Patroclus cheeks as he stood stiff-limbed, bow in hand, string taut with arrow gently quivering. His hope had faded as his friend dropped to the enemy's cruel blade and guilt washed through him like dark drowning floodwaters.

Then the cold tears turned to hot rage as Sarpedon's demands echoed in the archer's head. Gold? Gold!

Patroclus bellowed: "All this bloodshed for gold! This is all you wanted?"
"To do battle and gain the riches from such while cheating death. Is there anything more in the world than that?" Sarpedon replied with a wild laugh that sounded more hyena than human.

Patroclus let his bow drop. Defeated and perplexed, he told the others to get the madman what he desired. There was no need to lose more men or possibly give the killer a reason to enter the grounds and do harm to the innocents within.
Moments later, still standing atop the fortress wall, the archer watched as Sarpedon, with four donkeys heavy with gold, began his trek away from the bloodied keep. Below him, the families of the slain warriors rushed out wailing and screaming upon sight of the crimson carnage. His friend's wife, with their newborn babe swaddled in her arms, ran from the fortress gate and collapsed atop the still form of husband and father, weeping and shouting his name.

Sarpedon stopped halfway up the road, turned, and slid his helm from his head. He waved with blood-dripping gauntlets like a performer leaving his audience. The silver pendant about his neck slid from side to side across the chest of his armor; the grisly bodysuit still adorned with broken arrow and spear shafts.

Patroclus's eyes widened, focusing on the bloodless pin-cushioned armor body below the neckline and the bare face where Mallory's sword nick lay weeping red.
The archer brought his bow to bear.

Sarpedon's smile was large with teeth like the white of a sliced red radish.
Patroclus released.

THWACK!

© Peter J Welmerink