Dragonhammer: Volume II by Conner McCall Page B

no?” he asks mockingly.  “Well, let’s see if the great Dragonhammer can make his way out of this one.”
    The corner of my lip turns up as I count out the number of archers and judge some distance.  Titus raises his hand with an open palm.  As soon as he closes his fist, they will fire.
    I drop my hammer and spin around him, grabbing him around the chest and pulling him down.  Then I hold a throwing knife to his neck.
    “I think I just did,” I seethe.
    “Don’t fire!” Titus shouts frantically.  “Don’t shoot!”
    “That’s what I thought,” I mutter.  “Tell them to unload their crossbows.”
    “Kill me,” he says viciously.
    “Unload your weapons!” I command.  “Or he dies!”
    Most of the archers loose their bolts into the ground at their feet.
    “Now get them to put down their weapons,” I mutter.
    “Never,” he gasps.
    “Put down your weapons!” I dictate.  The archers look at each other and some of them make to put their weapons down, but don’t.  I tighten my grip and begin to press the blade into his throat.  “Put them down!” I roar.  As if to accentuate my command, Titus gasps as the blade puts pressure on his throat.
    Their crossbows hit the ground.
    “Good,” I mutter.  Then I walk backwards, holding the knife to Titus’s throat.  I don’t walk far before I find that Jarl Hralfar and many of my men stand with me, some of them archers.
    “You can let him go now,” the Jarl says.  “He is of no use to us.”
    “But he will always be fighting us,” I reply.  “He will not stop.  I may as well kill him and end it here.”
    “What about what you said out there?  His people coming to fight you?”
    “They may be a little less hard-headed as he.  In any case, I grow weary of his empty words.”
    “Do as you will,” says the Jarl.  “Let the consequences come.”
    Three words ring in my head.  If I must.
    Then I release him.  I throw him forward so that he lands on his hands and knees, coughing blood into the ground.  “No…” I hear him whisper.
    “You are to leave the war,” commands the Jarl.  “You have sought our destruction, and we have sought only our own defense.  If there is any more offense against us or our people, we will seek your destruction as you have sought ours.  Is that understood?”
    Titus shudders.
    Hralfar takes a deep breath and repeats, “I said, is that understood?!”
    “Yes,” he whispers.
    “Good,” the Jarl says.  Then, turning to me, he says, “Come.  We are done here.”
    I retrieve my hammer from the ground and return to the Jarl. 
    There’s a rustle.  I look back and see Titus sitting up, leaning on the monument.  Slowly he worms his way up until he is standing.  Then he raises his open palm and glares at me with vile loathing.  As his fist closes, the archer closest him blows into a curved horn, blasting one long baritone note into the sky.  There’s a roar as his army begins to charge and their line runs forward.
    “No matter which way this was going to turn out, he was going to attack,” the Jarl realizes.  “Perhaps there is no other way to resolve this but by bloodshed.”
    “Very well,” I mutter.  “If it’s a war he wants, it’s a war he’ll get.”
    Their line runs up the hill and around the monument as we make our way down to our army on the other side.  “Stand strong!” the Jarl commands.  “Stand strong!”  He waits for the enemy to reach the base of the hill before shouting, “Charge!”
    Then our army charges with thunder.
    I run with our front line, but I don’t shout like many of them do.  “Time to end this,” I mutter.
    Then with a crash the armies collide.
    They have the upper ground.  We fight upwards, towards the monument, but the slope of the hill gives our archers a clear shot of most of their army.  Though the hill is tall, it is not steep, and slowly we fight our way up.
    Their archers shoot from the top of the hill, but they can only shoot out