The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Gydryn recalled his conversation with Farid as they were leaving Raku and wondered if the prince was praying right now; he wondered if any of his men had taken on the desert religion and if their prayers would be heard, there within the demesne of the Seventeen; he wondered if they could possibly be answered.

  Prayer had always seemed to him to be...irrelevant. Even believing now that gods existed in the world, that some divinity could enact its will to bolster the lives of men such as his son Trell, he still held that his imminent success or failure would depend not on a god’s grace but on his choices, his decisions, his actions.

  Yet...if ever there was a time to speak such words as would gain the favor of the Akkadian gods, he reasoned this was probably it.

  The chorus of How?How?How? had become a doleful chanting at the back of his thoughts, the words underscored by a litany of the names of his enemies. Reason pointed to Morwyk as the source of this attack—as improbable as it seemed—for Stefan val Tryst was the only one to whom Gydryn’s army posed a threat, and if Radov had been able to summon hundreds of eidola, he would’ve done so to claim Raku.

  But the idea of the Duke of Morwyk somehow commanding an army of demons...this summoned a dread unlike anything Gydryn had ever known.

  The bellow of a distant horn floated to his ears. Amazing how a sound so faint could fill him with such foreboding.

  Loran was mounted on his horse a hundred paces closer to the mouth of the gorge. He spun his head and sought the king’s gaze. Gydryn nodded a painful acknowledgement.

  With his next breath, the duke was cantering down the lines, shouting to the men, to his officers, to everyone within earshot to run into the gorge.

  The army’s forward momentum built from a slow crawl to a funereal jog.

  How long before the tide of eidola swarmed their location? They had a sentry posted on high ground beyond the gorge with a view of the undulating valley spreading long to the south. Gydryn didn’t envy that brave man, sitting still on his horse until the last moment, watching the black wave of their ruination slowly approaching.

  Tavon was up in the metaphorical rafters of the gorge, madly setting charges to collapse the opening. Even this was a stopgap measure, something to buy Farid more time to transport the men to safety.

  Gydryn watched the soldiers assisting Tavon as they danced across the mossy cliffs on ropes secured to the trees above. They dangled hundreds of feet over certain death should a knot fail or a rope fray.

  He was going to have to ask hundreds more men to face the same certainty of death, that the thousands beyond them might be spared from it.

  And all of that assumed Farid could plumb the depths of his fortitude to keep steering them across the Pattern of the World. If the Nodefinder’s talent failed, they would all be lost.

  Gydryn wanted desperately take action, to be up there with the men setting charges or somehow helping Farid—to do anything to contribute to the effort; to feel useful, to keep his mind off the threat of annihilation bearing down on them.

  But his men had their orders. Short of chasing behind his army to try to make the men somehow run faster, all he could really do was observe as the danger grew closer in tormenting increments; as men dangled on ropes and soldiers jogged past; as the consequences of his decisions claimed their due.

  It was agonizing.

  Gydryn felt every grain of sand slipping through the tightening noose of the hourglass. Seconds became minutes where every heartbeat clocked the race between his men and the coming eidola swarm.

  Finally, the last of his army passed through the mouth of the gorge.

  Loran cantered to where Gydryn sat on his horse near the western wall and its shallow creek. The sky had lost its luminosity and become an opaque canvas, faintly violet-tinged.

  “I dinnae like one sou of this business.” Loran growled as he reined in his horse alongside Gydryn’s.

  Gydryn eyed him sidelong.

  “Separatin’ the men. Sendin’ the bulk o’ our forces away. Sealin’ us in with nae room to fight, nor any decent place to make a stand.”

  “We’ll make our stand right here, Loran,” Gydryn murmured.

  Verily, there was room aplenty for five hundred men to lose their lives.

  Gydryn lifted his gaze to Tavon’s men. Those on the west side were rappelling down long ropes to reach the gorge floor. Half a dozen others remained on the east wall, working feverishly beneath Tavon’s shouted direction.

  The combat engineer was roped into his own harness. At the moment, he was standing nearly sideways out of the cliff face, shouting directions to the remaining men who clung like squirrels to the moss-eaten rock. Gydryn caught only brief snatches of Tavon’s words, which came floating down along with the loose stones and tufted detritus of their pickaxes and chisels.

  The continuous countdown ongoing in the back of Gydryn’s thoughts marked the half-turn of the glass.

  In the distance beyond the mouth of the gorge, he saw a rider.

  Gydryn swallowed. “Time’s up.” He looked to his duke. “Signal Tavon to get his men out of there.”

  Loran cantered off to relay the orders.

  Gydryn watched the scout coming towards them at a ground-eating gallop. Just as he stormed through the gorge entrance, they came into view over a hill far behind him—a black line of seething inhumanity.

  “By the bloodless horns of Herne...” Loran jerked his horse to a halt beside Gydryn’s again. The duke’s face had gone ashen. “Are they men, or...”

  “Not anymore.” Gydryn spun his horse and headed deeper into the shaded canyon, with Loran close by his horse’s flank. They joined Ramsay val Baran in a location Tavon had determined safe from the blast, half-hidden from the entrance by a jutting wall and a swooping turn in the riverbed.

  Shortly thereafter, a staccato boom thundered through the gorge, followed by a churning rumble that shook the ground beneath them. They calmed their horses, then rode back into the dust cloud to assess the results of Tavon’s efforts.

  Spore-saturated motes swirled grey-green among the dust, backlit by long shafts of sunlight which illuminated a massive wall of rock now blocking the entrance to the gorge. Had it been an army of men coming towards them through the valley, Gydryn would’ve deemed their escape assured.

  Loran coughed and waved the dust out of his face. His gaze swept the towering mound of stone. “If that cannae hold’em, Sire, I cannae see what will.”

  Gydryn estimated an hour before the eidola broke through or somehow managed to climb the unscalable. He looked to Ramsay. “Gather the remaining men to receive my address for volunteers.”

  “Your will, Sire.” Ramsay set heels to his horse.

  When Gydryn looked back to Loran, the duke was frowning at him.

  The king arched brows.

  “Ye think I dinnae understand yer intent? I read ye better than ye give me credit for, Sire.”

  “I intend to save as many of my men as possible.”

  “But not yerself.” Loran looked him over with piercing blue eyes. “Yer plannin’ t’stand up front of th’ranks and face them monsters along with the five hundred volunteers. An’ if ye think I’m lettin’ ye get away with that, Gydryn, yer outta yer bloody mind.” When Gydryn merely gazed at him with a furrowed brow, Loran gripped his arm. “The kingdom won’t stand a day against Morwyk without you.”

  And suddenly, bizarrely, Gydryn felt a renewal of hope.

  He clapped a hand over Loran’s, which the duke held fast around his arm. “Thank you.”

  Loran withdrew, looking stupefied. “Yer welcome, I think.” He spied him narrowly. “What just happened?”

  “You pointed out the obvious truth I’ve been missing.” Gydryn reared his horse around and chased the creek through the gloom.

  The men collected in the widest portion of the gorge, where the riverbed notched to a higher elevation via a jumble of boulders.

  While the intrepid Prince Farid transported another hundred men across the node
, which lay not far beyond the tumble of falls, Gydryn climbed to the top of the rock formation to address his men.

  Above him flamed a stripe of fiery sunset sky. Below him spread his remaining army with eyes uplifted, three thousand soldiers waiting in charged silence. Gydryn felt the strain of their confusion, the urgency of their commanded flight, the dense, shadowed mystery of what-the-hell-is-happening? exploding in every tense exhalation.

  Beyond the men, Tavon stood with Gydryn’s quartermaster, Lachlan val Reith, beside a wooden chest. Inside it rested all of the Merdanti blades of their arsenal. A bare two score and ten. Still...fifty such weapons bettered their chances far more than none would have.

  Gydryn let his arms hang at his sides, but his entire body felt stretched taut, cords of determination interwoven with dread.

  “Men of Dannym,” he called. He heard his voice echoing in the gorge, and the gurgle of the stream, and his heart thudding in his ears, which in turn were too keen to the eidola’s inhuman, clattering war-cry that he expected at any moment. “You’ve all been told: the army coming for us is not a human force. These monsters who were once men are animated by the darkest magic. Only weapons that combat magic can defeat them.

  “Soldiers of Dannym, I know your strength and your courage, but believe me when I say this combined enemy is beyond us. That’s why Prince Farid is scraping the bones of his talent raw to transport us away from here as quickly as possible.” Gydryn cast his gaze across his men, feeling an ache in his chest. “It is unlikely that we will all make it.”

  “What can we do, Sire?” a soldier called from among the ranks, his tone purposeful, driven.

  Gydryn clenched his hands at his sides, then forced them to relax again. “We must do everything within our power to buy Prince Farid more time. To this end, as you perhaps saw or heard, Captain val Forbes and his brave crew caused a collapse that blocked the gorge. For now, it is holding off the tide of these creatures, called eidola, but having seen what they can do firsthand at the battle for Raku, I would be lying if I told you this barrier will deter them for long.”

  The king drew in a deep breath and let it out again, willing his men to hear what he couldn’t say, to feel what he couldn’t express, to understand what he hadn’t time to explain. “Soldiers of Dannym, though an inhuman army is at this very minute clawing its way to our midst, I beseech you: take solace in their presence here.”

  He gave them a moment to think on these words.

  Then he continued, “Mystery is the pit where fear lurks in wait; an ill, effervescent quivering that drags hesitation into our swings and injects a poisonous trepidation into our thoughts.

  “You’ve been living in secret for many moons to ensure our victorious return to Calgaryn. But no news in or out of Nahavand meant we’ve all been wondering, are we already too late? Has Morwyk besieged Calgaryn, even possibly claimed the throne? Is it all for naught?”

  Low murmuring confirmed these fears among the men.

  Gydryn cast his gaze across his noble army. “Soldiers of Dannym, I tell you unreservedly: we are not too late!” He flung a hand towards the gorge mouth, which lay half a mile behind the assembled men. “That force beating down our door is proof that Morwyk fears our return. And if he fears us, men, be assured he doesn’t yet hold Calgaryn!”

  A cheer met this pronouncement; yet their enthusiasm was not nearly restored enough for what he required.

  “Soldiers of Dannym, I know you’ll join me in rejoicing that these monsters are attacking us here rather than besieging our loved ones in Calgaryn, whose virgin eyes have never known the horrors of war. By our actions today, we ensure they never shall.”

  The men rumbled a fervent agreement.

  The king raised his voice. “You became soldiers because you were willing to trade your lives for a cause you believe in, but you’ve remained soldiers because you are Merdanti steel at your core! The creatures coming at us quiver and break beneath a Merdanti edge. Yet every one of you is such a blade!”

  The men shouted their agreement.

  “Your spirit is unbreakable; your will, indomitable!” Gydryn opened his arms as if to embrace them all. “You are dauntless, determined, resolute! Your eyes gleam with irreverence as you spit in Death’s face. Let Him know the depths of your disregard today!”

  Their cheering resounded off the mossy rock walls.

  The men had come back to life. Gydryn could see it their eyes, in the brace of their shoulders, in the interchange of glances among them. He hoped it would be enough.

  He raised his voice a final notch. “Soldiers of Dannym, let there be no mystery, only determined action! Let the boldest of you hold back the evil tide cast by Stefan val Tryst, and let the strongest among those wield Merdanti. May you claim a hundred of them for every one of us, and with each thrust and blow, know that you’re ensuring this army takes its next step towards home!”

  The soldiers roared.

  Gydryn climbed down off the rocks while Ramsay and the others corralled the five hundred men they needed. He had no doubt his entire army would’ve volunteered.

  Gydryn admired these men as immensely as he knew gratitude for their loyalty. These soldiers had endured years of battle to protect another man’s kingdom. They’d proven they would stay the course, no matter what came at them. Gydryn ever bore the tremendous weight of their trust in his leadership, of their unwavering loyalty to whatever cause he supported.

  As he was mounting his horse, his eye caught on a trio of soldiers, ready young men with youth still in their cheeks. They were gesturing with their blades in a mockery of any foe that might come for them.

  The scene reminded him, with an acutely painful ache in his chest, of Sebastian and his friends.

  The sun of Gydryn’s years had fallen to half-mast the day he lost his firstborn child, and it had never truly risen again. Sebastian’s light had been Gydryn’s light, his every hope invested into that starry boy, all of his dreams for the future to be carried forth by his heir. They’d all been charred to ash upon Sebastian’s death.

  Errodan had never recovered; nor Gydryn, in truth...until the day he’d awoken in Raku holding a clean slate of life and discovered that his treasured middle son—impossibly, incredibly—still lived.

  On that day, a spark had reignited inside Gydryn, and in the following weeks, its growing light had illuminated hope in his soul. He was honor-bound to bring this same soul-light back to Errodan, that it might banish the shadows haunting her also.

  And he’d be damned if he’d let Stefan val Tryst quench the flame of this purpose, no matter how deep the tide of darkness the duke had sent his way.

  Loran joined his side, and together they rode behind the five hundred men storming towards their reckoning with Fate.

  Gydryn had wanted Loran to go with the next batch of soldiers across the node. That way, at least one of them would make it home. But the duke was having none of it.

  Above their trotting horses spread a strip of twilight sky. Before them rose the mottled blockade of tumbled stone. Someone had planted torches along the gorge walls. Their wavering flames lent a spectral glimmer to the armor of the men. Gydryn sat on his horse behind his five hundred soldiers, keen to an electric anticipation.

  Foreboding threaded his own.

  Three hours.

  That’s all they needed. At Farid’s current pace, the army would be clear in three full turns of the glass. With any luck, it would take the creatures that long to climb over the rubble mountain.

  Perhaps a prayer...Farid’s wry voice made an appearance in his thoughts. But Gydryn needed more than ethereal prayer to stop an eidola.

  The sky darkened. The silence lengthened, then faded beneath a low murmuring of the men. Gydryn sat in a well of trepidation, his jaw clenched, fingers gripping his reins.

  It couldn’t have been more than a single turn of the glass when a darker-than-dark form appeared atop the rubble mound.

  Three more soon joined it.

  A hus
h claimed the men.

  The line of soldiers armed with Merdanti weapons moved slowly forward, forging the first line of defense. The remaining men formed ranks behind them. Gydryn sat on his horse with a black-bladed weapon across his lap. Loran and Ramsay did the same. They would be the last line.

  One of the eidola atop the rubble wall jumped into the air and fell—two hundred feet straight down.

  Gydryn watched its black body sink like a stone, swallowed completely by the sand. High above, a growing number of eidola chittered to each other.

  An instant later, the thing burst back aboveground, clawing itself out of the hole.

  Gydryn’s entire force of five hundred men took a reflexive step backwards.

  Even as the first eidola regained solid ground, five more had leapt and were digging themselves out. And more of the dark forms were materializing atop the rubble wall, only to throw themselves down with abandon.

  The sounds of clashing Merdanti steel soon mingled with an inhuman chittering that roused the hair on the back of Gydryn’s neck. But the first line of fifty men was holding. His battled-trained soldiers had started attacking even before the creatures could claw themselves free from the sand, leaving them in graves of their own making.

  Perhaps his scout, viewing from afar, had mistaken the enemy’s numbers. Only two dozen or so had summited the mound thus far. They carried no weapons, and Gydryn’s skilled swordsmen were quickly dispatching those that made it free of the sand.

  The king dared hope.

  Until a sudden blackening of the night drew his gaze heavenwards to find not a cloud shielding the moonlight but eidola gathering in masses along the gorge’s rim.

  One by one, they leapt outwards, streaking bolts of death plunging into holes behind his army’s lines, only to emerge an instant later to spread confusion, disorder—panic.

  Twenty...fifty...a hundred leapt from the heights, and on still they came.