The Dawn of Unions

by J P Corwyn

  Edren spoke simple truths. Those truths, however, had sent Kaith’s mind spinning. He was struck by a flash of sudden, terrible realization. He had made himself a target by standing on the ground with archery gear. If it came to a fight, he would almost certainly be dead before Edren had struck the rose a second time.

  Sir Cedric nodded amiably enough and opened his mouth to speak, when the small boy of ten who sat before him in the saddle looked up, leaning his head back against his father's mail-clad chest. He spoke in a sweet, childish treble.

  “Father? Does he really – do they really hold the Lord of Eastshadow so cheaply? Can I show them? Please?”

  Sir Cedric smiled indulgently and ran his fingers through the boy’s hair, tousling it. He nodded once, twice, then looked down into the boy’s pale face.

  “I believe he does, my son. Go on, then. Draw for these brave men a bitter draught of anticipation, ere we depart.”

  The three armsmen of his retinue chuckled, as did the boy. A haunting, discordant gibbering, their voices called to mind the monsters that lurked under every child’s bed, waiting for the candlelight to fade.

  “We want no trouble with you, Sir Cedric, and wish only that you and yours be on your way.” Edren tried in vain to gain this grim entourage’s attention and was roundly ignored for his trouble.

  The black-haired boy – Kaith had forgotten his name, if he'd ever known it – bowed his head for just a moment, then slowly raised it to look directly at Kaith. All at once, Kaith heard movement off to his left, then his right from across the bridge. Men, women, children, and beasts (four dogs, two wolves, and a white war-horse, that Kaith could see) stood up out of the grass in a wide swath to either side of bridge and boy. It spanned hundreds of feet in either direction at what appeared to be its outermost limit. This grim parade ambled its way toward them wearing faces that had ridden away from town in Sir Cedric's train, not two days before.

  Kaith opened his mouth to scream, or at least to give some cry of warning to the sleeping townspeople, but he had no voice. Chill fingers strode up his spine – phantoms of fear, rather than a physical presence. He drew in breath again, determined to give warning when suddenly the sound of struck metal peeled out like a bell: the alarm. Somewhere above him and to his left, Edren – blessed Edren – had found the fortitude and will to beat the claxon with authority and abandon.

  Doors burst open, and men rushed toward the sound, drawing weapons and trying to tighten belts as they moved. No sooner had bodies run their course and stood beside Kaith, issuing curses of confusion and fear, than the mounted party turned, easy as you please, and walked back into the last black shadows of the predawn forest. He could hear their laughter – that jangle of tuneless, discordant gibbering that froze the blood, and called all-to-familiar horror to awaken in the unattended corners of the mind.

  No sooner had the quartet of horses disappeared into the darkness than came the collective sound of heavy things falling against the grass. Kaith saw each and every corpse that had come loping toward the town fall as if they'd been puppets with their strings cut. Each, in turn, disappeared from sight, swallowed by the grasses. Westsong was now surrounded. If they attempted to leave, they would meet the same fate as Sir Reginald – who, Kaith noted, had been one of the first corpses to stand up.

  ✽✽✽

  FIVE

  Kaith was once more forced out of his own head and the horror show that bided there, playing and replaying itself during every quiet moment. He felt the pressure of Valgar’s hand slip fully to the back of his neck as, to his surprise, the Countess called his own name.

  The stiffness left Kaith spine. His head began to swim. Foolishly he began to stammer, “No. No, I take care of the weapons and armor… I’m no knight.”

  Valgar, taking full advantage of Kaith’s confused state, began to gently but firmly propel him forward almost as if he were a prisoner.

  Voice full of barely suppressed mirth, he said, “Yes, yes. Every one of us is well aware. Fortunately, little brother, that’s one problem her Excellency’s soon to set to right.”

  Kaith was gently, but firmly, guided down to one knee at the end of the line. The Countess said something, and the assemblage chuckled. His mind could make no sense of it.

  He'd been a blacksmith's apprentice until he was ten when his father had died, then had fed himself by working as a laborer on a farm for a year. He'd been either wise or fortunate enough to seize an opportunity and took service tending horses, weapons, and armor for Greggor. At fourteen, his duties had expanded to encompass Greggor's men, as well. He'd also begun training with Valgar, and the rest of her Excellency's armed retinue, but that was in service to creating a failsafe replacement for their melee team at tournament. Injuries happened often in such contests, so it had been prudent to have someone standing by to fill in.

  This is madness, he thought. I'm a tradesman's son. A likely choice for Valgar to squire, certainly…maybe even Robis, but I'm no Knight!

  A few moments later; her Excellency was standing directly before him, and all other thoughts fled his mind.

  “Kaith,” Ylspeth said. “You’ve served in my personal retinue these past four years. Before that, you spent several years as a groom for my personal guard, serving under Greggor's watchful eye. The Thorion Throne has watched your development for nearly a decade in total. In that time, your worth has become apparent.” There were murmurs of approval behind him. “With deliberation, therefore, I call you to service as a Knight of county Thorion, and await your oath of fealty.”

  For what seemed an interminable amount of time, Kaith had no idea what he might say – what oath he might give. As often happened in times of stress and confusion, the voice of his father came back to him: strong in his mind.

  “Choose your words with care and forethought where and whenever you can, for that’s best. When that’s impossible, it’s better to open the gate and let your horses run. They usually know where to go.”

  His father’s voice reached out to him across the years. Kaith smiled in spite of himself, opened his mouth, and did exactly as he’d been bidden.

  “I, Kaith of Thorion, do hereby swear to listen and to think, to train and teach, to hear and to be heard, to bolster and to break, to object and to obey, to cover and to kill until the skies are sundered, the stars refused to shine, or death take me.”

  His words, at first, were met with a shocked silence. It wasn’t until later that he would recognize the echoes of Sir Valad’s oath in his own. Within that silence, he heard that distant and discordant laughter from somewhere beyond the bridge. He wanted to look up to see if there were something coming up from the south, or some other sign of attack, but he dared not. Resigned, he waited.

  The Countess laid her fingers on the top of Kaith’s head and responded with surprising smoothness.

  “The Thorion Throne hears your words, accepts your oath, and offers you its own: fealty with love, valor with honor, oathbreaking with deadly vengeance.”

  She pulled a silver chain taught between her fingers, its links thick and strong, and lowered it over his head, just as she had with many of the eighteen who came before him. It was a squire’s chain, he knew, its steel links polished to a silver sheen. Had it been that of a knight, it would’ve been gold, not silver.

  Fully a dozen of the men who would end this day as knights had begun it as squires. It was common practice for squires to carry at least one spare silver chain, in case one were lost or damaged. Kaith was fairly certain that every silver chain granted anew today had been one of these spares. Such would undoubtedly be replaced with proper chains of station once everyone returned to Thorion’s County seat.

  Its grave weight came to rest against the back of his neck, falling halfway down his chest. The sensation seemed to center him, and grant him perhaps not a sense of peace, but one of calm and surety.

  “Arise, Sir Kaith,” said she, and then as an aside when Kaith got to his feet, “If you do not feel that you have yet
earned this honor, make it your mission to do so. As my first order to you, Sir Kaith, I command you to prove my faith in you as justified.” With that, she handed him a squire’s matching silver spurs.

  Kaith nodded as he accepted them, his face solemn. He was opening his mouth to both thank and assure her, or perhaps himself, that he would do just that. At that moment, however, the watchmen called from the second floor of the manor house.

  “Horses!”

  ✽✽✽

  SIX

  Orders were shouted before panic could set in, and people rushed as best they could to their assigned stations. There was comfort in having tasks and responsibilities. It was a cold comfort, but it served to stave off the first bite of fear that battle always brought. Kaith moved to run off as well, but Valgar held him back.

  “Fasten your spurs.” Valgar said.

  Kaith looked at him incredulously. “There isn’t time for that!”

  Valgar’s face was solemn and stern. “There is. The others will light the moat, and we aren’t facing a massive cavalry charge.” Valgar saw Kaith open his mouth to argue further, but he forestalled him. “You’ll need their weight to keep your feet to the road, Kaith. I will watch, and see if our need changes, but until then, fasten your spurs.”

  Kaith nodded, fighting back fear and a nervous grudge toward Valgar for insisting this be done now. He knelt to do as told. When he looked up again, half the town was on fire, and thirty creatures of incalculable malevolence stood or sat astride their stoic mounts on the other side of the bridge, watching the burning.

  Valgar handed him a tower shield he’d retrieved from somewhere. Kaith accepted it, nodded his thanks, and the two of them strode across to the meager line which had been erected just north of the bridge, joining its ranks and locking their shields into place on its east side.

  CHAPTER 4:

  A FORCED MARCH THROUGH MEMORY

  ONE

  Silver in the skies,

  Silver polished steel,

  Wound about my throat,

  And singing at my heel,

  Silver in the air,

  Burned, the battlefield,

  Silver brushed the rose,

  Who summoned me to kneel,

  Lanwreigh stood on Kaith’s right, his tower shield locked into position. Kaith noted a look flash across the youth’s face. He credited its source as relief at no longer having to stand at line’s end.

  Valgar now anchored their line to the left. With a dozen mounted fighting men, and more than a score of other assorted men, women, and beasts on foot before them, Kaith was more than glad to have familiar faces there beside him.

  "Did I see Sir Anden's men among Cedric's van?" Valgar sounded almost hopeful at the prospect. He'd been livid at Anden's treatment of Sir Valad when Kaith had told him the tale. "Didn't see that simpering pig Giles among them, but..." He trailed off as Greggor barked the order to dress the line.

  Fire licked up all around them, but there was enough space between the burning buildings and the line of shields (twelve in-all, five pole-weapons behind) to feel the punishing heat, without being burned by it directly.

  Kaith heard the sounds of arrows being loosed from somewhere behind. Yaru and Arafad, doing their level best to thin the herd from the second-story windows of the manor house.

  He then heard the shrill tones of Sir Cedric’s youngest son. His childish treble voice seemed incongruously calm as it overtopped the muscular, rather more primal sound of the burning wood and tar. Kaith couldn’t help but recognize the boy's excitement, though he couldn't make out so much as a word above the din.

  A moment later there was an enormous gust of wind. Soon after; an unearthly thunderclap rent the night. Though it had been quite clear at sunset, the sky now opened, releasing a deluge of rain. Such a sudden change in the weather absolutely had to be sorcerous in origin. The boy must have been singing blandishments to whatever darksome deity had granted him license to puppeteer the fallen.

  Kaith smiled darkly to himself. I’m afraid water’s not going to do much to put those fires out, young master. The oil that the Countess had ordered mixed with the pitch and dung would have to either burn itself out or be covered by good old-fashioned Skolfish earth.

  Kaith heard Sir Cedric yell, “Damn you boy, it isn’t working!”

  "Fine!" The boy's shouts sounded sulky and sour as if he were overtired.

  Kaith started to laugh. He couldn’t help himself. The situation was absolutely dire, and yet it sounded like their collective demise was being kept at bay by the megrims of a whining, simpering child allowed to stay up past his bedtime.

  He felt Lanwreigh stiffened to his right. All at once Kaith could no longer find the humor, even gallows humor, in the situation. He hadn’t been thinking. Both the boy and his father were also Lanwreigh’s kin. Several of the mounted men-at-arms who stood among Sir Cedric’s honor guard had been men and boys newly up the hourglass that had trained with, and in some cases, outright trained, Lanwreigh. He’d known them all his life. And now they were coming to kill him.

  "They aren't your kin, Lanwreigh," Robis said from behind them. He leaned the haft of his glaive atop the place where Kaith and Lanwreigh's shields overlapped and leaned his head forward. "I know they look like the men you know and love, but it's a lie. They're wearing their faces, not carrying their souls." He spoke in the hollow-eyed tones of a grizzled veteran, not a youth in his middle teens.

  “But—” Lanwreigh protested.

  “But nothing!” Robis cut across him with a sharpness to his voice that Kaith had never heard in a boy his age. “All you have to do is hear them speak, look at their flesh, to know the truth. They are not your kin.” Robis emphasized the last three words as if he were throwing darts.

  He isn’t a boy, though, Kaith thought. He may have only seen sixteen years, but after what we’ve seen here?

  “Lanian…” Lanwreigh’s voice was choked, little more than a ragged gasp. “I can hear him. My baby brother, much as he hates being called that, still sounds like himself. His voice isn't ragged, his face isn't stained with shadow like the others. Surely he can be saved…”

  “Lanwreigh,” Robis said. “Listen to him.”

  “Sdraliana thoriash inagro misda regna,” Lanian peeped. His yet-unbroken voice seemed to caress the words, calling to mind the innocence of a child speaking to his favorite pet. Inexplicably, it also called to mind the darker and more disturbing sense of a man crooning to a wet and writhing lover – a supplicant begging for release.

  “Has he ever spoken like that before? Have you ever heard words like that before?” Robis pressed.

  The boy repeated the alien words thrice more: gaining in volume and intensity with each blasphemous decree.

  “Sdraliana thoriash inagro misda regna... Sdraliana thoriash inagro misda regna! Sdraliana thoriash inagro misda regna!!"

  Surely such words were blasphemous. Must be blasphemous. Hearing them made Kaith's head swim, his belly suddenly full of ice and snow.

  “If you have," Robis pressed, "then I’ll be glad to hear it, for they freeze my blood, and understanding their meaning might settle my mind.”

  Kaith could see Lanwreigh shaking his head. Could hear the sound of leather creaking as the youth gripped his shield and the hilt of his sword more tightly.

  Anyone who’d seen such evil, stared it in the all-too-familiar face, and stood to fight against it anyway, Kaith thought, is certainly worthy of their spurs. Robis and Lanwreigh are no exceptions. And don't they say that knighthood changes a man? Strengthens and forges him anew?

  “They’re com-ing!” Valgar said, nearly sing-songed. “Make ready!”

  Kaith could hear the uneven sound of hooves, boots, and something tapping as it ran on the other side of the shield wall, directly toward them. He found this last sound especially disturbing. His rising fear raged against the battle focus Greggor and Valgar had beaten into him: trying to conjure all manner of answers to the question of what was hurtling t
oward him.

  One image kept emerging on the stage of his fearful mind’s eye. Over and over again he saw the wolf that had taken poor Milton Forester. He knew that was impossible, but it was difficult to get the idea out of his head.

  Alnik had led a group of men out with spears and bill hooks, poking, prodding and dragging the nearby corpses into the moat this afternoon, though they had stayed prudently clear of Robis's father.

  They still feared he would stand and, retaining the skill at arms he'd been known for in life, would overmatch them. Now each of the so-called "runaways" they'd dragged into that wide, dry moat would be on fire, if not already incinerated, including the wolf found near Forester's body.

  Still; Kaith's fear refused to accept any other explanation for the strange clicking sound which was even now hurtling directly toward him.