“What is a siege engine?”
“Do you see the towers of the bridge?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I have chosen them as the anchors for my siege engines. These are powerful weapons designed to attack many people at once, or to destroy the walls of the very greatest of fortresses. I have already used them several times in my combat to the south of here. They are very effective weapons.”
“I don’t have any walls here to knock down.”
It was meant as a joke. Lored allowed a small smile. “You have many troops. I could kill several hundred with a wave of my hand.”
“Are you a sorcerer?”
“No. I have siege engines.”
“What do they do?”
“In this case they hurl great stones and burning collections of oil and smaller stones that will scatter when they hit the ground and burn everything they touch.”
Theorio considered that notion. “How many of these weapons do you have?”
“Currently there are eight of them built and waiting to destroy whatever I aim them at.”
“And where are they aimed?”
Lored’s smile came back, wide and enthusiastic and utterly terrifying in the number of teeth it bared. “They are aimed at your soldiers, of course. The better to kill them if you do not surrender to me.”
“I do not believe in surrender.”
“I am offering you a kindness. Should Tuskandru be the one to attack, you would all be dead within a day. My way, you survive and consider attacking again when I am not prepared.”
“When you are not prepared?” Theorio stared at the gigantic man in front of him and tried to look past the scars that covered all bared flesh. He was trying to imagine what sort of hellish things might have scarred him that much in the first place.
“If I am being honest, I am always prepared, but without hope we have nothing, yes?”
“I cannot surrender to you. I think you are lying.”
Lored raised his left arm and made a fist. He then brought the fist down hard.
One of the odd collections of lumber atop the closest bridge tower shuddered and rumbled, and then something sailed through the air, trailing a thick streamer of smoke.
“What have you…?”
Theorio turned and watched that vast something rip through the skies with the speed of an angry storm crow past him.
“A demonstration to tell you the truth of my words, King Theorio.” By the time Lored had stopped speaking the missile hit the first column of Theorio’s soldiers. Whatever held the smoking mass together broke, and true to the King in Bronze’s words, flaming stones exploded across the ground and all over his troops as the mass rolled and tumbled to a stop.
Horses shrieked and bucked and threw themselves and their riders hard. They were burning and so were the men riding them. The soldiers screamed as well and beat at the fires that licked at their tunics and their bared flesh.
Theorio stared on, horrified. This was not warfare. This was a massacre.
“How did you do this thing?”
“My god, Ordna, told me the secrets. I listened to him.”
Theorio drew his sword and prepared to fight. An instant later an arrow drove through his wrist and forced him to drop the weapon.
He screamed a lot. The damned arrow hurt.
Throughout, Lored looked at him with a small smile.
When he was done screaming, Lored looked at him and asked, “Will you fight or will you surrender?”
“We fight!” Theorio roared the words and drew his dagger from its sheath. He’d pry that maddening metallic mask away and cut out whatever was under it.
Lored roared and reached forward, a brutal smile on his face. “On this we agree, King Theorio!”
His great mace swept around and slammed into Theorio’s forearm, shattering bone and pulping meat. The dagger fell to the ground and Lored hauled the King of Morwhen from his saddle. Theorio Krouse was a strong man and he fought hard despite his injuries.
While he struggled Roon charged forward, low over his horse as he’d been taught, one of his spears held at the ready.
The world tilted and Theorio groaned as the thing under Lored moved, lashing out with thick paws and slapping Roon’s spear aside. His son was prepared, he was braced, and so he sailed from his saddle and fell to the ground as the strength of the creature simply overwhelmed him.
Lored’s powerful arms were not injured and did not bleed. The man hauled Theorio to him as the King of Morwhen’s horse ran from the great beast beneath the King in Bronze.
Theorio watched while his son was mauled, his face ripped into shreds by the claws of the monster. As he struggled, more of the giant stones soared past him to crash into his troops.
They were prepared for warfare, but not for this.
Lored pulled him higher still until they looked eye to eye and Theorio thrashed, trying to break the grip. His arms would not work, his legs were at the wrong angle to help him.
“I was told to take you alive, King Theorio! Fight me and the rest of your people die!”
Theorio did not surrender. He fought with all that he had. He bit, he screamed, he spat and he even drove the point of the arrow piercing his wrist into Lored’s face.
He did not die that day.
Nor did he win.
When they reached the Edge, Drask called for Brackka to stop and his friend did. To make the ascent possible, he tied Nolan March to Brackka’s back and then they all climbed. It would have been easier to find the Hallis Pass, but he wanted Tega to learn how to climb, as she never had done so before.
By the time they had finished the ascent, Tega’s hands were bloodied and torn. She stared at them for a few moments before healing them.
They stood on the ground of the Wellish Steppes, and not a hundred yards distant was a large outcropping of shale and stone. It could not quite be called a hill, but it was certainly more than a boulder. Drask looked at the stone and nodded his head. Beneath that stone, the Wellish Overlords lay trapped, locked in a semi-slumber. They could think, but they could not move. They could starve, but they could not die. It was a proper punishment.
“The Wellish Overlords: they were the last great enemy of the Fellein, is that correct?” Drask was not certain where the information came from, but it was in his head. Best that he doublecheck its veracity.
Tega nodded slowly as she sat down and watched him make a fire. She still had a dazed, nearly sleepy look on her face, but she seemed more coherent now. That was a good thing. Drask grew tired of only his own thoughts for true companionship and it seemed neither Nolan nor Tega had been capable of much actual thought since the lot of them had bathed in the energies of the Mounds and then absorbed them.
“That was a long time ago,” Tega said. It was the first time Drask had heard her voice in many days, bar the occasional grunt of exertion as they climbed. “Several hundred years, I think. They came for the people of Fellein and tried to take Canhoon by force.” She paused and looked up at the sky. There were clouds here, and a breeze, which was more than could be said for the deathly still Blasted Lands.
“Desh told me how they were stopped, but it has been a long time and I don’t recall clearly.” She frowned. “I am having trouble thinking.”
“It is getting better though, yes?”
She nodded softly and smiled. She had a lovely smile, even if it was completely unmarred. Drask could appreciate the aesthetic of smooth skin, even if he preferred the stories that scars told on well-healed flesh.
He looked at Tega’s freshly healed hands. There were several new scars there from her climb.
Drask asked her, “Why did you wait before you healed your hands?”
“I wasn’t sure I could do that.”
He looked back at the stillness of the Blasted Lands and nodded.
Finally, bored with watching Nolan stare at the ground, he moved over to the boy and moved his head into the proper position. Muscles were not a problem,
but several fragments of broken vertebrae had to be moved before they could be mended. When he was done Nolan looked around and frowned with an idiot expression. Drask could not decide if his mind was broken too, but for the present time left him alone.
“Your people. Do they truly worship gods?” Drask asked Tega, who was holding her hands before the fire.
She was a long time answering, “Some of them do. Most, I think, consider the idea for a while and then pretend.”
“That is the problem with distant gods. Faith is not always easy in silence.”
In the back of his head there were seven gods doing their very best to get his attention. He had not yet decided if he felt like listening to them any longer. The world sometimes changed when you were transformed, and while they seemed to want to talk to him, Drask was not certain that he wanted to hear what they had to say.
The gods had lied. They told him that the Mounds were forbidden and he believed them. They said that the world was changed by the Fellein when they destroyed Korwa, and for his entire life that truth had been accepted, but now, he was no longer completely certain. If gods lied, what did they tell the truth about? How could anything he had believed be considered the truth without examination?
“Your Desh Krohan, can he do what we can do now?”
“No.” Tega frowned. “At least I do not think so.”
Drask looked toward the still silence of the Blasted Lands. With very little effort he could see the footprints where they had walked across the vast, motionless expanse.
“I do not like it.”
“You do not like what?” Tega moved closer and put her arms around his bicep. Her hands were tiny. She was tiny.
Ignored by them both, Nolan let out a low moan. He blinked slowly but his eyes remained unfocussed even if they were no longer staring at the ground as they had these past days. Slowly, he moved to join them by the fire.
“All my life the Blasted Lands have raged and thundered and now they are too quiet. I do not like it.”
Drask concentrated and willed a change. The air far below stirred, and a moment later the winds roared, spiraling outward from where he stared, taking the dust and grit with them. He made the air as cold as ice and waited as the storm he created grew and spread across the still wastelands.
Drask nodded. “That is better.”
Far below him and under the great stones that held them pinned in place, the Wellish Overlords let out a noise that none but Drask and his two companions could hear. Not even Brackka could hear the sound. Still, he looked to Drask and smiled in the way of mounts.
Drask smiled back, glad he’d resurrected his trusted friend.
“Where do we go now? I can feel that Canhoon has moved and Tyrne is gone.”
Drask looked down at her. She looked back up with wide, guileless eyes.
“Canhoon moves. So do we. We will find it.”
They sat at the fire and waited for a while. They were not tired and they did not need to eat, but some habits are hard to break after a lifetime. Eventually they rose and all three climbed atop Brackka’s broad back. Tega rode in front of Drask, and because it was easier than teaching him, Drask tied Nolan to the saddle.
When the mount started moving, Drask patted his neck and said, “Go very fast, Brackka. As fast as you can.”
The miles tore past.
The town was larger than he would have imagined and that pleased Tusk. The ride along the river was easy enough and the town was open on all sides. It was not a place that dealt with war. It was a village that dealt with boats and fish.
Currently there were several boats along the docks. Some were small. A few were impressively large. They could have potential.
There were also many people along the shoreline, most looking toward Tusk and his people. Perhaps a hundred of them appeared armed. The rest stood in their crowds and looked on, faces painted with dread. It was not an expression Tusk was used to, but he understood the meaning. They thought they were going to die and that there was nothing they could do about it.
There was no thrill in that sort of enemy, only a mild contempt.
When he got closer, a small contingency broke away and approached. “You wish to take the city?” one asked. His language might be different but the meaning was plain enough.
Tusk contemplated answering the man in one of his own tongues, but decided he was not in the mood to toy with them. He said in the tongue of the Fellein, “I am here for your city and all that is inside it. I do not care if you wish to fight or if you wish to surrender.”
“We are just fishermen and merchants.” The man who spoke to him had leathery skin and hair that had been bleached blonde by the sun. His eyes were blue and he stared at Tusk with a wince on his face, as if he already knew that whatever arguments they might make, Tusk and his people would answer with steel. “We do not wish to die.”
“My god does not believe in mercy.”
The man looked him up and down for a long moment. “Who is your god?”
“Durhallem. The Wounder. The Unforgiving. He is a god of war, and he is the god of obsidian and his way is the way of combat.”
“Durhallem does not accept surrender as an option?”
“No.”
“Will you wait here for a few moments? I would discuss with my people.” It was a different sort of request. Normally people tended to beg or to fight. Either way, they were met with the same answer. Durhallem did not take prisoners.
“You may discuss the situation among yourselves. If you attempt to attack, we will kill you.”
The tanned man looked at him. “You are four times my size. I am carrying a skinning knife that I do not think would even part the fur on your… on whatever beast you ride. There will be no treachery.”
Tusk nodded and leaned back in his seat, wishing that Stastha were here to see this. She would have had a few sharp comments and would have made him laugh.
After nearly ten minutes the man came back. “We wish to join you and follow Durhallem.”
Tusk leaned back a bit more. “Repeat that.”
“We wish to join you and follow Durhallem.”
Behind him a few of the other Sa’ba Taalor talked among themselves. They did not speak the Fellein tongue and could not understand what caused Tusk’s expression. They merely knew that he was surprised.
“In all my years none have ever made this offer.”
“In all my years I have never had the followers of a war god come to my doorstep.”
“True enough.”
Tusk spoke to Durhallem and his god spoke back.
“Durhallem would require a test. A proof of your loyalty to him.”
“What would he require?”
What indeed?
Tusk asked and Durhallem answered.
The king nodded. His god was wise.
“Do you have a forge here? A metal worker’s forge?”
The tanned man nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
Tusk nodded in turn. “There will be a test of loyalty. Also, you will need weapons.”
“Weapons?”
“A god of war does not ask that you follow with kindness in your heart. The Wounder will make great demands of you and you will have to prove yourselves in combat. Do you understand this?”
“What do we get from Durhallem in return?”
“Prove your loyalty and the Wounder will tell you himself.”
“The god would speak to me personally?”
Tusk nodded. “The god would speak to all of you. All of the followers of Durhallem have heard from the Wounder and follow him by choice. We are born to this. This, what you ask, it is a new thing and requires… improvisation. You must show your loyalty. Then you can speak to Durhallem. Then you will have the chance to join his brethren under my command.”
“And what is your name?”
“I am Tuskandru, King in Obsidian and Chosen of the Forge of Durhallem.”
“You are a king?” He sounded surprised.
“What else would I be?”
“I thought perhaps a general.”
“I am a king. In the army of Durhallem I am also the general.”
“Ah. I see.”
Tusk, who knew what Durhallem had in mind, nodded. “You will. Soon enough you will.”
As they moved along, the hundred or so with weapons very carefully set them aside. It was one thing to attack and defend if you had to, but the word had already spread, and the invaders were so very large in comparison. And so very many.
Tuskandru’s army numbered in the thousands, and even the children who walked with them were armed and looked ready to kill.
Tusk gestured to a small girl who was lean and hard and looked like she might have been from Fellein, save for the scars on her body and the slightly feral way she stared at everyone. The tanned man looked at her with a worried expression.
“Mendt.” The girl moved closer. “Gather coins. One for each of the people in this town.” He looked at the crowd that was now moving cautiously along the edges of the Sa’ba Taalor.
For their part the followers of Durhallem noticed the people and remained prepared. Sooner or late everyone encountered the followers of Wrommish and learned that even a small person without a weapon could be deadly.
“What is your name?” Tusk spoke to the tanned man.
“Bram Littner.”
“Bram Littner, tell your people to each offer one coin to Mendt and the others with her. It does not matter what size coin. The value is of no concern.”
Bram nodded. He held up his hands and called out loudly in his tongue and Tusk listened. A moment later he sent Mendt on her way and told her to gather the coins and to choose others to help her. Being a wise young warrior, she chose several skilled fighters to back her. It was not that she could not handle herself, it was rather that the coins would be heavy and she wanted to share the burden with others who could carry it.
It was almost an hour later when the column stopped at the small forge and settled down. The people of the city were surrounded by Tuskandru’s Sa’ba Taalor. Mendt had collected an impressive number of coins.
“Bram Littner, are you a leader of your people?”
Bram nodded his head and worried at his lower lip.
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