Garrett nodded.
“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing quickly.
When Bu turned, Bao Zi was there. He bade his lord to come close to him.
“Your life matters the most, my lord,” Bao Zi said. “Your life; then mine. Be careful of this two-faced western knight. He is false.”
“That he is,” Bu replied, “but we do need the support of the nobles.”
“My lord,” Bao Zi said with a bow. “We should get moving again.”
Bu nodded.
It felt like they hurried across the snow and ice for hours, the black keep slowly getting closer and closer, until the landscape changed from flat, icy plains to jagged, icy rock and they had to slow and move more carefully. The rock jutted up from the ground in all different directions as if the earth had given Fealmynster natural defenses. Bu knew it was black magic.
The keep was even larger than Bu had expected. Once they passed the icy crags—Caleb and Alster falling at least once and opening old wounds or cutting a new gash on their forehead or cheek—they came to a wide, circular slope, almost like a reverse palisade. It must have slowly and gently dropped a hundred paces when it finally ended in a collection of buildings—homes perhaps or more likely, barracks. The keep itself stood at the center of the round, flat area, not only rising the hundred paces to where Bu stood, but another fifty more.
The keep was a circular building made of black stone that seemed to drink up all the light and reflect nothing back. As far as he could tell, there were no windows, and the top did not have the crenels like other castles or keeps but was rather flat. A walkway surrounded the keep halfway up, but other than that, it was one huge wall of solid black stone.
Bu saw men down below, in the town of Fealmynster, if one could call it that. The sun was setting, and he couldn’t see them well, but they all looked like men, and they all looked armored, taking up defensive positions all around the reversed circular palisade.
“That’s a hard fight, Bao Zi,” Bu said.
“Aye,” Bao Zi croaked. “Just remember what you said. We get the sword and get out of there. Pay no concern for these bastards.”
Bu heard something from behind them. Another roar. Another snow bear? The same one? No. He now recognized that sound; men screaming.
45
Erik could tell by the scattered tools and the cracks and open pot marks in the walls that most of the mining took place in the cave. Tall baskets of rock and ore leaned against the walls.
“Where are the giants?” Bryon asked.
As if in response, they heard the sucking of air, looked behind them, saw a bright flash of green light, and a giant fell from the cave ceiling, landing on his feet and crouching low, hand on the ground to steady himself. The giant looked up, saw them, and roared.
“Run!” Erik yelled, and they rushed out of the cave, setting out over the icy plains of this new place.
The wind whipped at them, and every step felt unsure and unstable, but Erik knew death lay behind them. Where were they going? To the keep. He saw green flashes to his right and left in other caves, other portals to the mine, and more giants emerged and joined the chase.
They ran as fast as they could, but the ground beneath their feet was slippery. The space between them and the giants was clouded with wind-blown dust, but they could still make out the shape of the giants in pursuit. Every once in a while, one of them would yell or roar, but they didn’t seem as fast in this place as they were in the mountain forest. Erik looked to his left and saw one giant catching up with Nafer but then the huge creature stumbled. Erik heard a loud crack, something breaking, and the giant screamed, not in anger but terror. He threw his hands up and disappeared with a great splash.
“We’re on a frozen lake!” Erik shouted.
The beasts chasing them were so heavy, they had to be careful not to crack the ice and fall in, but Erik and the others never slowed as the distant sun, a veiled yellowish-white orb hanging gingerly in the sky behind a myriad of wispy clouds, began to sink below the western horizon. The winds died down a little with the advent of dusk, and the reflections of the sun along the icy ground was something Erik had never seen before. The sun itself was a hazy blurry ball of light, but the ice reflected deep oranges and yellows and brilliant purples in long, gentle streaks. It was as if the Creator had simply brushed the color along the ground.
Even though the sun was distant and blurry behind clouds and snow, it cast a rare warmth on Erik’s face in this frigid wasteland as day slipped into night. For a moment, Erik slowed, wanting to take in the vision of sun and its reflections, and the warmth on his skin was refreshing, like the scent of mint on a cool spring morning. He wondered if that was what the sun looked like when someone first opened their eyes in the afterlife.
“Erik! Keep going!” Bryon said.
“Don’t ... slow ... down,” Turk panted.
Erik looked behind them. The giants were gone.
“They’re not following us anymore,” Erik said and drew to a halt. He looked at his feet. Frozen grass. “And no more lake.”
“There may be ... no need to run,” Turk said, as he bent over with his hands on his knees as he caught his breath, “but I wouldn’t ... trust this place to just stand here.”
“Do you think the ice on that lake ever melts?” Erik asked.
“Once, maybe,” Turk replied. “Maybe once there were hot summers here. But I am sure it has been ice for many years.”
For all the horrible things about this place, it seemed to truly sit closer to heaven. Night fell and the clouds washed away, leaving a black sky teeming with stars that were not only white, but red, yellow, green, and blue. They were so close, and Erik thought he could reach out and touch them. He poked at one, bringing back a distant childhood memory. The bright moon reflected off the ice that covered the ground, just as the sun had at dusk, casting long purplish-white fingers over the ground, and not only stars filled the night sky. Mesmerizing lights—green and purple, yellow and red, violet and blue—danced and flowed like water, undulating back and forth.
“I always wondered what those lights were,” Erik said, looking over his shoulder, checking the giants had still given up the chase.
“The sun,” Turk replied.
“How?” Bryon asked. “It’s night.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Nafer replied with a quick, forced laugh.
“Truly,” Turk said. “The sun reflects through the heavens as it reaches into our world and something about our sky what is up there causes these lights.”
Erik remembered a moment when he was in the treasure room of Orvencrest. His dagger had given him a vision, a picture in his mind of the space beyond their world, of stars and suns and even other planets. The cosmos, his dagger had called it, and Erik understood.
At first, it was distant, but as they moved on again, a tall tower-like structure, black in the tundra night, rose up, looming over them even from so far away. As they grew closer, the structure seemed the very antithesis of the white, broken, elvish tower, and Erik could see how truly large it was.
“Do you think the elvish tower looked like this?” Bryon asked, voicing Erik’s thoughts.
“Perhaps,” Beldar replied, “Who knows?”
As they neared the tower, they could see it was made of black stone that darkened all around it as if it sucked up any ambient light. The icy plains before the building turned into rocky crags, white and jutting upwards from the earth at all angles. They did their best to watch their steps, but it was difficult as they tried to circumvent these dangerous rocks. One slip and a fall could be their last. Erik looked back again. Still no giants.
“This doesn’t seem natural,” Bryon said.
“No, it certainly doesn’t,” Nafer replied.
The jagged rocks stopped just before the earth gave way to a vast, round bowl in the earth, and the icy ground sloped gently downwards until it leveled off into a town with mostly dark buildings. Armored men stood shoulder to shoulder a
nd surrounded the whole of the town, seemingly all the way around the vast gorge. They clearly guarded the tower, and it looked as if they knew someone was coming as they stood at attention, waiting.
The town looked barren and, in a way, fake. It reminded Erik of Orvencrest, where everything was dead or stale. The buildings all looked the same and were spaced evenly, allowing roads of slabs of stone to easily crisscross the whole valley. There were carts and wagons sitting next to roads and structures, but they seemed out of place, stuck in time, almost. Erik didn’t see any citizens, men and women who had nothing to do with combat or the protection of the keep. He saw no children and no animals. The place was silent.
Erik could now see the tower was a castle keep that rose up in the middle of the bowl, taller than Erik had expected when viewed from a distance. In the moonlight, the black stone walls reflected none of the pallid light, and the only thing that broke up the smooth sides of the cylindrical building was a circular walkway that sat halfway up. Erik saw a figure standing there, black robes fluttering gently in the nighttime breeze, a hood pulled over the face. He remembered the faceless man from his dreams and his vision from his baptism.
“Welcome to Fealmynster,” Turk whispered.
“I don’t think I’m very happy to have finally found it,” Erik added.
Erik looked to his left and saw six men. He could barely see their faces in the darkness and distance, but he knew they stared back at him. Three of them looked like knights … Hámonian knights.
“By the Creator,” Erik murmured, “How on earth did they make it all the way up here?”
But then he thought they might be asking themselves the same question.
He drew his sword and pulled his shield off his back.
“What is it?” Bryon asked. He’d been keeping an eye on the men down below.
“Hámonians,” Erik replied. “To our left.”
He strained, squinting, and then his eyes went wide. He knew that man who stood slightly apart from the others. He had seen him once before, in the Southern Mountains, when he had killed Patûk Al’Banan. He didn’t know his name then, but now, he did.
“Bu Al’Banan.”
“The one who supposedly calls himself the new King of Hámon?” Bryon asked.
But they didn’t have time to talk anymore about it. Erik heard crashing behind him, and then something struck him in the back, launching him forward to tumble down the slope of the round valley and towards the town, the soldiers, and the keep. Shards of rock and ice showered the ground around him as he slid. He heard shouting—his friends—and more shouting, this time in Shengu. Someone had pushed him, perhaps the defenders of Fealmynster, sneaking behind them. Whatever it was, Erik slid down the slope to certain death.
46
As he slid down the slope, Erik’s body spun around, and at the right moment, he could see the ledge above. The men who had pushed them were giants, but instead of wearing simple vests and tunics made from fur, they wore plates of iron armor pieced together, covering their stomach, throat, and chest. One of the giants screamed as he bashed away the jagged rocks of ice with a massive mace, one that made Nafer’s weapon look like a child’s toy.
Erik’s friends slid after him. It looked as if Bu and his men were given the same treatment, but a giant picked up the last knight left at the top and threw him down the slope as if he were one of Beth’s dolls. The knight flew through the air and landed right next to Erik with an audible crunch. His armor scraped against the ice and caught in such a way that the knight, presumably dead, spun around and around as they continued their descent.
The armored men below took notice of the commotion—it would have been hard not too—and all snapped to attention. They looked the same, round shields, long spears, tight leather armor that covered their whole body, and leather, conical helms. As Erik neared the bottom of the valley, he lifted his feet so that he might come quickly to stand when he landed. The armored men all lowered their spears in unison and crouched into a fighting stance.
Will they attack as soon as I hit the ground?
He came to a stop and was quickly back on his feet, shield and sword ready. The armored men in front of him didn’t move. The dead knight haphazardly sliding down the slope slid past Erik, skidded along the icy ground—which was made of slabs of stone—and stopped just in front of the line of defenders. In unison, the five closest to the dead knight pointed their spears at the deceased man and stabbed. The body flopped about under the attack. If any breath remained in the man’s lungs, it was gone now. The leather armored men then moved back into their fighting stance.
The dwarves and Bryon joined Erik, all readying themselves to fight, but none of the spearmen moved. Bu and his remaining men landed in the same fashion and, in the same way, the spearmen nearest to Bu’s group waited. Erik looked up, over his shoulder. The giants glared down at them but didn’t give chase. One of them grunted and, looking as if he was their leader with more armor than the others and a large, double-headed battle-axe, growled and gave a quick shout Erik didn’t understand.
Suddenly, Erik heard a low buzzing murmur, and he felt his hair stand on end. The keep, looming over them like a giant, black fang, began to glow with a faint bluish-white light. It looked as if lightning pulsed up and down the structure until the lightning rose up from the top of the tower into the sky, snapping and popping and dancing haphazardly.
The lightning, crackling like fire, formed a ball of blue light that hovered just above the tower. It hissed, like damp wood burning, and flashed brightly. In harmony, the spearmen took one step forward, staying in their fighting stance. The ball of light crackled again, and a low hum reverberated through the valley of Fealmynster, and, again, the spearmen stepped forward one step. It was as if the light was directing the soldiers.
As they neared, Erik could see the spearmen’s faces. Their skin was a pale green, their cheeks sunken and drawn. Their mouths were flat and emotionless. Their armor was all the same, with no markings or standards, as were their shields. They looked like specters. As eerie as these soldiers looked, the most unnerving thing about their appearance was their eyes. Their eyes were black orbs, small round pools of emptiness. Their eyes said nothing. They were like the dead, and they all looked the same. There was no diversity in these soldiers.
Erik glanced up and saw again the robed figure, standing on the circular walkway of the keep. The figure moved a hand, lifting it up, and the light crackled again before the town’s defenders all took another step. He thought he heard shouting and wondered if it was this mysterious person. He then looked to Bu Al’Banan standing with his remaining men.
“We can’t fight them and each other at the same time!” Erik yelled, keeping his eyes trained forward.
“Are you Erik Eleodum?” Bu asked, shouting. He must have remembered seeing him as well.
“I am,” Erik called back.
“When this is over,” Bu said, “you will be the Dragon Sword’s first victim. Call it revenge for killing my father.”
“We both know he wasn’t your father,” Erik replied.
He saw Bu shrug out of the corner of his eye.
The blue ball of light that hovered above the keep pulsated, its circumference growing and shrinking, hissed, and then popped. The robed figure then clapped and the ball exploded, spreading its light out like the canopy of a tent, shedding an eerie glow over the whole of the town. The spearmen attacked.
“Do we fight together?” Erik shouted to Bu.
Bu didn’t answer, even though the spearmen were almost upon them.
“Yes!” Bu finally replied. “We fight together!”
Erik ran the first ghostly soldier through with Ilken’s Blade. It was as if the spearman felt nothing. There was no cry of pain when Erik withdrew his blade, and the spearman tried to fight on but faltered. Erik lopped his head off.
“They’re already dead,” Bryon said after he’d also removed a head.
But these men didn’t look like t
he dead in Erik’s dream. They weren’t rotting. They bled. They breathed.
“No,” Erik said. “They’re possessed.”
The spearmen fought with expertise and precision, but they fought without emotion. They were programmed, moving in predictable patterns. And when singled out, they were almost useless.
The first to die was one of the Hámonian knights. Another one of the knights tried to run to the man, lying face down, when Bu yelled.
“Garrett, leave him!” Bu yelled. “Stay in rank.”
Another one of Bu’s men was the next to go down. He looked like he was from Golgolithul, like Bu and the old, grizzled soldier fighting next to him. One of the ghostly soldiers stabbed the man in the leg. Another spear punched through his shoulder, breaking through the other side.
“Together!” Erik cried. “Bu! Together!”
Bu and his two other men seemed to understand. They ran to Erik as Bryon and the dwarves stood shoulder to shoulder with each other. Bu pressed hard against Erik, groaning angrily as he did, and the old soldier stepped to the other side, next to Bryon. They stepped forward, slowly, methodically. Beldar and Bofim jabbed out with their spears. Any of the possessed who got by the ranged weapons met dwarvish and elvish steel. The smell of searing meat filled the air with each man Bryon killed. Every once in a while, the older soldier seemed to get bored. He would break rank, kill four or five of the spearmen, and then step back in line with Bryon. Erik remembered him as well, especially his scar. He had cut the man with Bryon’s sword and expected him to be dead. He was a true fighter.
Erik heard a cry from their ranks and saw blood running from Nafer’s forehead. The tip of a spear blade poked out of Bofim’s chest, and even Bryon’s face was covered in blood, a mixture of his and his victims’. The other Hámonian knight, Garrett, faltered and went to one knee, but then fought back to his feet with a loud, angry grunt. The three dozen that had stood in front of Erik were dead, only to be replaced by more possessed soldiers coming to fill their ranks. And still Erik and Bu and the others fought on.
Dragon Sword: Demon's Fire Book 1 Page 30
