“He is audacious, my empress. Without fear, by all accounts. The saga of his life as a sell-sword and a reaver is well known to the folk of the northlands.”
Zyrashana’s lip curled in a sneer. “I care nothing for tales sung by bards and poets! We must reach the western coast by autumn’s end. This king of heathens must not delay us!”
“The land is treacherous, my queen,” Ebonfyre said, his muscles tensing. “Mountain and vale, not given to easy traversal. Caylen-Tor’s clansmen claim the lands from the snow-bound steppes to the frontiers of Darkenhold. A patchwork alliance of tribes at best, but the woad-men of the north are tenacious warriors.”
Zyrashana’s tone darkened. “I mean to engage the rebellious satrapies by the spring. Seizing the coffers of the western fiefdoms and controlling the spice routes are integral to that campaign. Ultimately, the lands beyond our frontiers shall fall. I shall rule unopposed. Do you not wish this to be so, my loyal servitor?”
Ebonfyre’s pallid brow furrowed. “I do, my empress.”
“Then reach the Atlantean Sea before the first frosts of winter. Cut a swath through the lands of Caylen-Tor and teach this barbarian king an unforgettable lesson in warcraft. Let the world see what happens when a savage who sports the pelt of a wolf across his brawny back dares to oppose me.” A toothsome smile then illumined Zyrashana’s beguilingly beautiful face. “Succeed, and all that I have promised you will at last come to pass. You wish to rule the world by my side, do you not?”
Ebonfyre gazed into the queen’s emerald eyes, seeing the faint trace of mockery which sparkled there. He set his chiseled jaw as he strove to conceal his true thoughts from those searching eyes and the cunning mind unceasingly at work behind them. “I wish to rule, my queen.”
“Then set to your task, Talus Ebonfyre. The black spirit of Xul will ensure your success.”
“And the rite of exorcism?” said Talus tersely. “You will keep your vow, once your desires are fulfilled?”
“All in good time, my dog of war,” Zyrashana whispered seductively. “First you must do my bidding. Then we will speak of spells and rituals. Now, carry out my orders. I await news of your glorious victory.”
The contours of the queen’s eburnean image began to fade, the details rapidly blurring until nothing but an amorphous, undulating spectrum of hues remained. At length, the colours within the glass dissipated until only the piceous darkness of the antechamber was reflected within the obsidian frame.
Ebonfyre relaxed his muscles, exhaling slowly. Then he turned to Ulagchi, who was still lurking silently in the shadows.
“Get out!”
The dark figure glided swiftly to the door, unlocking it and disappearing into the black corridor beyond.
Alone, the general moved to a low trestle table opposite the doorway, upon which stood an amphora of wine and three bronze goblets. He filled one of the vessels and drained its contents in a single swallow. As he refilled the goblet, he caught sight of his own reflection within the great mirror, seeing his eyes glinting in the guttering torchlight. For a brief moment, he glimpsed something staring back at him, something alien and iniquitous which gazed at him through his own eyes, something... else. Whispers of treachery and deceit filled his ears, sibilant and insidious promises of power and dominion. Ebonfyre closed his eyes, quieting the voice, quelling the darkly insistent entreaties which coursed through his mind. Then, his eyes snapped open and he strode to the mirror, glaring irefully at his fuliginous reflection. Abruptly, Ebonfyre drove his fist into the glass, shattering it into countless jagged shards. Sighing heavily, he drained the goblet and moved back to the trestle table.
“Yes, we shall march for Blackhelm Vale,” whispered Talus, filling his vessel once more with Delanian red wine. Several crimson drops spilled to the table to merge with the beads of blood which were steadily issuing from his riven, shard-studded knuckles. “Caylen-Tor shall pay dearly for deigning to oppose me. I shall make an example of this barbarian king and his ramshackle warband of painted savages. And we shall yet see who ultimately rules from the throne of Mytos K’unn!”
Chapter VI
The Serpent in the Dreamscape
Caylen reclined in his oaken bed, staring grimly at the chamber’s ornate ceiling timbers. Carven images of totemic tribal animals gazed solemnly down upon him from the broad rafters; wolves, bears, ravens, eagles, boars and stags, all appearing to sit in baleful and silent judgement upon the harrowed Wolf-King. Plumes of pale smoke rose languorously from the guttering flames of the room’s wide hearth, slowly disappearing into the depths of the darkling shadows. With a weary sigh, Caylen glanced at the beauteous form of his wife who lay slumbering beside him. He had become handfasted to Astrid Grimmsdottir shortly after his coronation ceremony and the union had been welcomed by most of the tribal elders, particularly by Astrid’s father, the chieftain Grimm Ironhand. During the three years since the marriage, Caylen had sired two children; a bright-eyed and winsome daughter and a bold and roguish son. Now, as Caylen somberly pondered his progeny’s uncertain future, a great fire of resolve burned anew within his soul. “I’ll not have my heirs growing up in an outpost of a foreign empire!” he whispered angrily to the darkness.
Astrid stirred fitfully at his side. “Caylen?” she breathed.
“I’ve awoken you, lass. Such was not my intent.”
“What troubles you?” she asked, fixing Caylen with an anxious gaze.
“The looming war,” growled Caylen, brushing a lock of Astrid’s golden hair from before her ice-blue eyes. “But I will not burden you with such matters.”
Astrid frowned. “I worry for my father,” she whispered. “He will fight alongside you, although his strength has waned with the passing of the years.”
“Do not fret about old Ironhand!” grinned Caylen. “He’s still a better warrior than most of the clansmen half his age! At any rate, I shall watch over him in the fray.”
Astrid’s pale brow furrowed. “Why have you thwarted my ambition to join the battle? It vexes me.”
Caylen sighed. “You are a mighty shield-maiden, Astrid. But know that I will not imperil you. If I am slain, it will fall to you to rule in my stead and raise our children.”
“You shall not perish!” hissed Astrid fervently. “You will endure and see our children grow. Every day they ask that you train them in the art of the blade and the bow.”
“And so I will,” enounced Caylen. “When this battle is won, I shall make doughty warriors of them, that I vow!”
“Drogha Tul seems to think they are destined for greatness. He believes they will one day fulfil some ancient tribal prophecy.”
Caylen scowled. “That old wizard is constantly casting the runes or peering into the scrying pools. He’s obsessed with his damned omens and auguries.”
“You know, old Hertha says our daughter should not be taught the craft of war,” said Astrid. “She reckons it’s a man’s game.”
“Tell her she’s wrong.”
Astrid sighed. “I have, but she does not listen to me.”
“Well she damn well should,” said Caylen, grasping Astrid’s eburnean shoulders and drawing her close. “You are the Wolf-Queen, the daughter of Ironhand! You’re more than a match for any man in the fray!”
“I certainly overcame your defences,” replied Astrid with a seductive smile.
Caylen grinned and planted a lusty kiss upon his wife’s fulsome lips. And only many hours later, when his passion was fully spent, did he finally succumb to a fitful slumber.
Caylen-Tor stood upon a barren, rocky plain, surrounded by black trilithons which jutted from the desolate ground like jagged, broken teeth. Above him, a vast cerulean moon gleamed balefully, its edges limned with a ring of rutilant flame. Around his forearm coiled a great viridescent serpent, its sinuous body tightly encircling his muscles. From the serpent’s toothsome maw, three blood red tongues flickered forth, and the creature’s azure eyes gleamed with a fearful malefic light. Gazing into the distance
, Caylen beheld several dark shapes moving within the desolate vista; slithering shades almost imperceptible against the stygian tapestry of the night. As he watched, the fell shapes multiplied, growing in number until the darkling horizon was a black unbroken sea of undulating shadow. The brooding sky darkened further and the shapes shimmered and writhed as they approached, seeming now to be as one with the massing dark, their amorphous bodies becoming an extension of the blackness as if they were composed of the very oppressive, sweltering darkness itself. Inexorably, the tenebrous shapes slithered and shambled toward him until they were so close that he could smell their hot foetid breath, a stench akin to the bloated bodies of slain warriors which had split to spill their mold-mottled contents to the hungry earth. Suddenly, the serpent encoiled about his sword-arm shrieked in primal ophidian rage and ruinous arcs of cerulean lightning lanced forth from between its envenomed jaws. The jagged tendrils of energy clove into the dark eidolons, dealing coruscating ruin and destruction. The black shadows withered and dissipated at the touch of the purifying radiance, their aphotic countenances fading like smoke dispersed by the wind. Time and again the crackling azure lightning issued forth pitilessly from the three-tongued serpent, until the great sea of black fiends was no more and only a supine darkling mist remained to creep away across the piceous plain. Slowly, a looming shape became evident within the sinuous remnants of the fog. It was a slime-flecked altar hewn from black stone, crowned by a leering serpentine effigy which boasted a distended, fang-studded maw and baleful ophidian eyes. With a shudder, Caylen realized he had seen the vile carving before, in the atramentous, primeval caverns deep beneath a desolate desert fortress. Long ago, it had spoken cryptic words of prophecy in a sibilant, inhuman tongue. Shifting his gaze from the squatting aberration, Caylen glanced skyward. High above, the sanguineous disc enshrouding the moon dissolved abruptly and the benighted vista became bathed in cool, lambent light. The mournful howl of a solitary wolf echoed in the far distance and Caylen slowly raised his sword-arm. The serpent was gone.
Caylen awoke with a start, a sheen of sweat glistening upon his brow, his breathing ragged. He glanced quickly about his bed-chamber to see the dying embers of the hearth-fire glowing faintly in the darkness. Astrid slumbered soundly beside him, her lissome, somnolent form bathed by the pale moonlight which filtered through the room’s narrow window. Sighing heavily, he raised his hand to wipe his brow, and froze. Etched deeply upon the flesh of his forearm, clearly visible in the moon-gleam, was the deep imprint of a serpent’s scaly hide. An uneasy smile crossed Caylen’s face and he looked to the corner of the room where his armour and weapons were arrayed upon their pedestals. His bronze scale-mail cuirass and his intricately engraved iron helmet with its chainmail aventail were displayed proudly upon an oaken frame, while the tribal sword Caled-draca stood upright on its wooden plinth, flanked by his broadsword Wolf’s Tooth and his fearsome, rune-etched war axe. Moonlight danced faintly upon the great sword’s serpent carvings, the bejeweled ophidian eyes glimmering balefully.
The dragon! The Three Tongued Serpent has awoken!
Beside him, Astrid awoke suddenly from her slumber. “My lord?” she whispered. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing,” Caylen said, gently stroking her spun-gold tresses. “A dream. A good omen. Go back to sleep.”
He slowly covered his wife’s alabastrine shoulders with the fur blankets and settled down once more in his oaken bed, staring silently into the darkness which was rapidly retreating before the onset of the dawn.
Chapter VII
Blood and Steel in the Verdure
The Imperial Expeditionary Army of Queen Zyrashana moved slowly westwards, like a great black serpent winding its way across the landscape. Talus Ebonfyre rode at the head of the Iron Jackal Legion, his subordinates flanking him.
General Tolodes eyed the terrain disdainfully. “Miles of cursed marshland behind us, the crags and woods of the barbaricum ahead,” he spat. “We should have embarked from the Zulantian coastal garrisons, approaching the western kingdoms via the trade routes from the south.”
“You do not approve of these tactics, Tolodes?” rumbled Ebonfyre ominously.
The general tightened his grip upon his rawhide reins. “I live only to serve the Empire, my lord. I merely point out an alternative. These damned lands are near impassable.”
“The southern route would have extended our journey by hundreds of leagues, adding months to our campaign,” Ebonfyre said. “There is no other route through the mountains and we cannot yet risk facing the Zulantian army. Black pirates prowl the Middle Sea, preying even upon the triremes of Koord’s navy. Mark me, this is the only road open to us, such as it is.”
“Of course, my lord,” breathed Tolodes. “The empress shall prevail.”
“Indeed,” growled Ebonfyre, adjusting his black cloak about his shoulders. “But do not expect a swift end to this expedition. This continent has known conflict without end for more generations than the chroniclers can easily reckon. The jarldoms of the north are riven by civil war. The satrapies of the east are ceaselessly embroiled in revolt and rebellion. In the south, the once mighty fortresses of the Vyrgothian kings lie in ruins. Only Gul-Kothoth now stands defiant against the Emperor Koord’s armies. And yet even that proud bastion must ultimately fall. The world is in a state of constant war.”
Tolodes frowned. “Our legions shall prevail, my lord. The foes of the empress shall crumble before us, as did the Delanian host.”
“Delania!” spat Ebonfyre derisively. “Gustanhav’s army was concerned more with ostentation and pageantry than prowess in battle. It was scarcely a test of our mettle.”
“It matters not,” said Tolodes guardedly. “The king is dead and his army is crushed. The kingdom now belongs to the empress.”
“For as long as we can hold it in her name,” snapped Talus.
A black-garbed outrider reined his mount to canter alongside Ebonfyre’s steed. “My lord. Two hundred yards ahead. There is something you should see.”
Ebonfyre and Tolodes coaxed their mounts out of formation and galloped ahead with the outrider. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the forest had begun to thicken, encroaching subtly upon the army of intruders. Behind the tangle of the brooding verdure, dark grey crags loomed on either side of the advancing legions like a retinue of dolent sentinels, and in the dim distance, beyond the rock-strewn hills, a vast expanse of shadowed moorland stretched to the dim horizon.
So, we enter the lands of the barbarians at last, Ebonfyre thought.
The outrider reined his mount to a halt before a pair of towering yew trees at the perimeter of the darkling woods. From their gnarled boughs, two imperial scouts had been hung, their bodies mottled with decay and acrawl with pale, bloated maggots. A black cloud of flies swarmed about the corpses, and from the branches of the tallest yew, a large crow, its sharp beak red with gore, watched impassively.
“Scouts from the Sixth Viper Legion,” exclaimed Tolodes. “A warning to us from the savages.” His pensive gaze swept the surrounding trees and crags. “Gods, these woods are thick with ghosts! There are countless eyes upon us even now, I can feel it!”
Ebonfyre gazed grimly up at the rotting bodies. Shards of gleaming bone were visible through countless ragged gashes in the ruined flesh. In a sudden flurry of black, the lone crow swept from its perch to peck out the single remaining eye of the nearest corpse.
“We should cut them down,” coughed Tolodes, watching as the orb was torn free of its socket. “Burn them. They are our men, after all.”
Ebonfyre grimaced as he stared into the tenebrous depths of the forest before them. Vast boughs and boles extended as far as the eye could see, ultimately disappearing into impenetrable, sylvan shadow.
“We cannot pass through this wood.” he said at last. “My Jackal scouts say the terrain is passable some leagues beyond those crags, where the land opens to a wide valley. Outrider, scout ahead. Find our path!”
The outrider t
hundered off to the west of the great forest, cresting a steep rise beyond which a sparsely wooded glen lay shadowed by the foothills of a distant mountain range.
“And these poor wretches?” rasped Tolodes, squinting up at the carious bodies swinging gruesomely above.
Ebonfyre was already wheeling his steed back towards the advancing army. “Leave them where they hang,” he said.
* * *
Wulfric Oakenbrand knelt in the underbrush, silent and unmoving, scanning the dense forest which stretched before him. He wore a hooded jerkin over which was buckled his baldric of slender double-edged throwing knives and his face was streaked with woad and ochre. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the dense canopy of branches to cast a fragmented glow upon the forest floor.
I see you, thought Wulfric, staring at a group of towering oak trees some fifty paces to his left. He slowly slipped a blade from its sheath.
From behind the oaks, a figure suddenly broke cover and began to sprint deeper into the shadows of the wood. In an instant, Wulfric’s bone-hilted knife had hissed from the undergrowth and hammered into the back of the target, embedding itself firmly between the fleeing man’s shoulder blades. The figure fell without a sound and lay still. After several seconds, Wulfric rose from the underbrush and bounded over to the fallen warrior. He was quickly joined by a grey-bearded man, clad in green and carrying a yew shortbow and a notched scramasax.
“Well thrown, wolfshead,” the man said.
Wulfric pulled the knife clear of the corpse and wiped the blade clean of blood before returning it to its sheath. He then rolled the dead man over on to his back, noting the red serpent embroidered on his black jerkin. A stylized jackal motif was visible below the serpent blazon.
“Look at that sigil, Eirik. This is an Iron Jackal scout. The empire has crossed our frontier!”
“Fie!” spat Eirik contemptuously. “If these thrall-bred whoresons think they can…”
The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor Page 9
