Chapter 250 Red river bridge: alpha Klaus's POV

Chapter 250 Red river bridge: alpha Klaus's POV
The stone bridge shook under the thunder of fifty iron-shod chargers.

The sound was deafening, a roaring wave of iron, horseflesh, and screaming men echoing off the frozen canyon walls.
The Red River raged eighty feet below us, black and deadly against the jagged ice shelf, but my eyes never left the red horsehair crest of Vane’s helmet.

"Shield wall!" I bellowed, my voice cutting through the wind. "Lock ranks! Hold the line!"

Valerius and thirty heavy spearmen slammed their oak shields together, forming a tight, double-layered wall of wood and iron right at our end of the bridge. The bottom edge of their shields bit into the icy dirt. Long iron spears jutted out through the gaps like the spines of a cornered boar.

"Brace!" Valerius screamed, pressing his shoulder hard into the back of his shield.

The cavalry hit us like an avalanche.

The lead horse slammed into the middle of our shield wall with a horrific crunch of splintering timber and snapping bones. Two of my spearmen were lifted clean off their feet and thrown backward into the snow, but the wall held. The sharp iron spearheads drove deep into the chests of the chargers, sending horses and riders crashing down in a thrashing pile of black fur, blood, and iron mail.

"Push!" I roared, stepping into the blood-slick gap.

I swung my broadsword in a lethal horizontal arc. The blade sheared clean through the wooden shaft of an incoming enemy lance, then bit deep into the neck of a rider’s mount. The horse went down with a wet thud, trapping its rider’s leg under two hundred pounds of iron and muscle.

Before the rider could pull his saber, I drove the pommel of my sword straight into his iron visor, crushing his skull.

Behind the enemy line, Vane’s archers on the stone watchtower tried to draw their heavy bows. But high up on the eastern crag, Zoey was already at work.

Two arrows hissed through the freezing air in quick succession.

The first archer took a broadhead straight through his throat, tumbling backward off the timber platform into the canyon below. The second archer dropped his bow, clutching his eye as another of Zoey's arrows pinned him to the stone wall.

Through the blood bond humming in my chest, I felt her cold, lethal focus. She was my shadow on the ridge, sweeping the high ground clear so I could drive forward.

"Forward!" I shouted, kicking a dead rider off the narrow path. "Clear the arch!"

Bram stepped into the blood with me, his heavy battleaxe swinging like a pendulum of death. He split an iron shield in half with a single brutal blow, the axe head sinking deep into the chest of a steppe rider behind it. Blood sprayed across the icy black stones of the bridge, steaming in the freezing air.

The bridge was too narrow for fifty horsemen to use their numbers.

Vane’s elite guard was trapped in a bottleneck of their own making. The dead and dying horses blocked their advance, forcing the riders behind to dismount and fight on foot with their curved sabers.

"Klaus!" Bram spat, wiping a thick streak of horse blood from his cheek. "There he is!"

Through the rising white steam of horse breath and the thick grey smoke of the battlefield, Lord Warlord Vane pushed his way to the front of his line.

He had dismounted his heavy stallion. In his right hand, he held a broad, heavy-bladed broadsword that dripped with dark red gore. In his left, a spiked iron buckler shield. His iron faceplate was raised, revealing cold grey eyes and a face covered in old battle scars.

"You soft mountain dog!" Vane snarled, stepping over the carcass of one of his own chargers. "You think killing my supply camp makes you a king? I will cut your heart out and feed it to my hounds!"

"Stop talking, Vane," I growled, stepping forward to meet him in the middle of the bridge. "And die like a man."

Vane lunged with terrifying speed for a man in full chainmail.

His curved blade cut through the air, aimed directly at my neck. I raised my broadsword, catching his steel near the hilt with a loud CLANG that sent sparks flying into the cold wind.

He immediately followed up with a brutal strike from his spiked buckler, aiming for my face.

I ducked under the iron spike, but the edge grazed my left cheekbone, cutting the skin open. Warm blood trickled down into my beard, but I barely felt it. The primal wolf within me roared, demanding blood for blood.

Vane pressed his advantage, swinging a wild series of heavy overhead cuts. Each blow fell like a sledgehammer against my blade. Step by step, he pushed me back toward the edge of the stone bridge.

My boot slipped on a patch of frozen blood near the low stone parapet.

Vane saw the misstep and grinned, raising his heavy broadsword high with both hands to split my skull in two.

A black-feathered arrow slammed straight into Vane’s right shoulder, punching clean through his iron shoulder-guard.

Vane gasped, his arm wavering as the blow lost its power.

High on the ridge, Zoey was already nocking her next shaft. She didn't have a clean shot at his heart through the melee, but she didn't need one. She just needed to give me one second.

That second was all I needed.

I stepped inside Vane’s ruined guard, my iron boot driving hard into his kneecap. A loud snap echoed over the roar of the river, and Vane grunted in agony, dropping to one knee on the bloody stone.

I grabbed the front of his iron breastplate with my left hand, pulling him up until his face was inches from mine.

"The North Pack belongs to no warlord," I growled into his ear.

I drove my father’s broadsword straight up through his chest, underneath his iron breastplate.

Vane’s eyes went wide, filled with shock and sudden, cold terror. He choked, a dark bubble of blood rising to his lips as he gripped my arm with trembling, bloody fingers.

I twisted the blade, pulled it free, and shoved his body backward over the low stone wall.

Vane fell without a sound, his body turning twice in the air before smashing into the black, jagged ice of the Red River eighty feet below. The rapid current caught him instantly, dragging his heavy iron body down into the freezing dark.

The remaining steppe riders went dead silent.

They looked at the empty space on the bridge wall where their warlord had just stood. Then they looked at me—covered in blood, holding my father's red-stained steel, backed by eighty howling North Pack warriors.

Panic broke out in their ranks like wildfire.

"The Warlord is dead!" someone screamed from the back of the line. "Fall back! Fall back to the east!"

They threw down their heavy iron spears and fled across the bridge, scattering into the thick pine forests beyond the gatehouse.

"Let them run!" I yelled, lifting my blade high above my head. "The river belongs to the North!"

My warriors erupted into a thunderous roar of victory. Bram sank his axe into a wooden post, howling at the grey sky, while Valerius and the spearmen pounded their shields in rhythm.

I stood in the center of the Red River bridge, breathing heavily, watching the blood drip off the tip of my blade into the white snow.

Through the blood bond, the tension in my chest eased, replaced by a warm, fierce pride.

I looked up at the high granite crag above the bridge. Zoey stood at the edge of the cliff, her short bow resting at her side, her wool cloak blowing in the mountain wind.

She looked down at me, and across the distance of the gorge, our eyes met.

The battle for the Red River was won.