The Kingdom - Page 144/201

Phalon, in full battle regalia, plunged across the blood soaked ground littered with arrows and the debris of past days' engagements. We drew ever closer to the wall formed of gigantic boulders, precision placed by the offspring of the fallen Malachim.

The city was a formidable fortress, but greater than this last holdout had already fallen prey to the will of the men, still pure in their bloodline, that charged at my back. Size didn't make the man and this war against giants proved it.

Arrows, from giant sized bows that were twice the length of our own arrows, flew by me to slam into others in the unbroken line of surging heavy cavalry. Where one horse and rider went down another soon took his place.

Swords forward, we broke our fixed line to angle for each of the seven ramps that had just now clamped against the base of the city wall. I dodged Phalon to the left and a giant sized spear plowed into the ground where we had just been. Another passed by my head so close that I felt the whisper touch of its staff against my helmet.

I heard the scream of a horse falling behind me, which no doubt heralded the death of yet one more of my treasured men, and the knowledge of that drove me on harder. Phalon leapt onto the ramp's back and chewed up the wood slatted slope that still stank of the refuse of men and animals.

Within moments the battered wall top was before us and a giant that topped my own height by four feet stabbed at me with a spear. I ducked under the jab of the spear even as I swung my blade for the giant's head. As Phalon's iron shod hooves let off sparks upon landing on the wide wall top, even so did the giant's helmeted head as it fell with a dull clatter onto the stones.

On foot these giants of Sapan dwarfed us, but on horseback we were their equal for height. With a spike affixed to his head plate, Phalon gored into another giant guard. The giant was driven backward as he let out a roar of pain.

I drew my second sword clear, even as both of the giant's grasping six fingered hands reached to break my horse's neck. Both hands fell to the ground from a forward swishing downstroke of my blades and screeching the giant fell down before us, only to be clambered up and over by Phalon.

More and more of my Knights had streamed up and over the wall and the giants, for all their size, could not match our numbers or the force of our will. Still, the fighting was intense and it was with relief that I saw the main gate to the city burst inward from the force of a siege ram under the command of the King of Smirnaz.