Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  Then he looked around, and realized where they stood.

  The door had led them out onto the wide ruins of some ancient stage of iron and dark marble, all remnants of wooden supports and flooring having long rotted to dust. They were some fifty feet above the courtyard, standing in a solid wash of snow that reached even Raz’s knees, but despite this the skeleton of the long-forsaken contraptions loomed like cruel fingers closing up and over them through the dark. Immediately Raz understood why there were stairs at the end of the dungeon, and why the door he had just forced open seemed to have been shut for the entirety of several generations. The Laorin, after all, could make use of empty cells and the dark gloom of the prison.

  But the faith would never have had need of gallows.

  Abruptly, the weight of what Carro had done fell over Raz, heavy and terrible, and he turned to look at the man who stood behind him in the snow. The Priest, too, was staring up at the metal and stone scaffolds above them. There was no sign of regret on his bearded face, however. No sign of shame or self-hate.

  Rather, it seemed something like a smile played on the man’s lips, as he looked up at the haunting reminders of what his beloved Citadel had once been.

  “Carro…” Raz started, taking half-a-step towards the man, unsure of what to say.

  The Priest brought his eyes down to him, and Raz saw that he was indeed smiling. At the same time, he saw the glint of tears track against the man’s flushed cheeks, illuminated by the dull hint of the Moon through the clouds above.

  When he spoke, though, Carro’s voice rose above the wind like the words of a man suddenly set free.

  “Go, Raz. Bring her back to us.”

  Raz stood there, looking down at the man. He took in Carro’s face, recognizing the sacrifice the Priest was making, understanding what he had just given up, and what he had given it up for.

  Then he nodded, turned, and ran along ramparts, heading for the outline of the stairs he could see some hundred feet off, leading down into the courtyard below.

  Tell her to hold on, he prayed to Her Stars as he moved. Tell her I’m coming.

  When Jofrey barreled up the last steps of the Dead Man’s Climb, he found the Last Door thrown wide, its rusted hinges flaking and cracked under a force he knew only magic or the atherian could have provided. His blood chilled at the sight of the great iron thing, shifted from its position for the first time since the Laorin had settled Cyurgi’ Di, vowing the Citadel would never again suffer witness to such willing disrespect of Laor’s gifts.

  And now it lay open, symbolic of the betrayal of the man who stood quietly waiting just inside.

  “Carro…” Jofrey said in a stunned voice, putting a hand out behind him to stop Cullen and Kallet Brern, Priest Elber, and the group of other Priests and Priestesses who had followed once they’d managed to break the rune traps laid out at the bottom of the stairs. “Carro… What have you done?”

  Carro al’Dor stood silent for a long time, staring out into the wind and snow of the stormy winter night. When he finally moved, he turned to smile sadly at his old friend.

  Jofrey saw the lines the tears had traced on his face.

  “I’m sorry, Jofrey,” Carro said, his voice shaking. “I… I couldn’t lose them both.”

  Jofrey said nothing, stepping forward carefully to stand beside the aging Priest, joining him in the frame of the Last Door. He, too, looked out into the blizzard, noting the clawed tracks leading out and away through the gibbets, across the ramparts.

  “Carro… Petrük will demand your head for this,” he said, his eyes not leaving the last sign Raz i’Syul Arro had left as he escaped. “I won’t be able to protect you…”

  “And I won’t ask you to,” Carro said, his voice more firm now. “I’ve broken our only decree, Jofrey. I know the law.”

  “And Reyn?” Jofrey asked in a hushed tone, stepping closer and looking at the Priest again, afraid of the answer. “Did he help you? We found him downst—”

  “Reyn Hartlet had no part in this,” Carro said loudly, so that the councilmen and group hovering along the top of the stair behind Jofrey could hear. “This was my doing, and mine alone.” Then, in a softer voice, he added: “I stopped him before he could undo your ward. He violated no law, whatever his intentions might have been.”

  Jofrey felt himself sag in relief. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to sentence his former student to be Broken.

  It would be hard enough to do once…

  “Carro, will you come with us?” he asked gently.

  Carro nodded, but didn’t move away from the door. For several seconds more he continued to stare out into the night.

  “Do you think he’ll manage it?” he asked suddenly. “Do you think he’ll reach her?”

  Jofrey didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he looked back out through the now open Last Door, looking again at the clawed footprints, their outlines already dulled by the ever-falling snow. He hadn’t told the council what he knew of the atherian, what Talo Brahnt had told him of the boy Syrah had met, so many years ago. He recalled vividly the images his mind had conjured up as Talo had described what Syrah had witnessed, had told him of the bloody spectacle Raz i’Syul Arro had produced in just a few short seconds.

  And as he thought of it now, all he could do was pray the Lifegiver would keep as many of the mountain men out of the atherian’s path as possible.

  “If anyone can manage it, he’s the one, my friend,” Jofrey said, stepping forward and taking Carro’s arm lightly. “Now come on. Let’s get you out of the cold.”

  XXXVII

  “When the Scourge fought for himself, he was a terror. He made a bloody mess of anything that came within reach, eviscerating and butchering all that threatened him and his own. When he fought for the woman, though, he became something more. There was a feeling about the way he moved, the way he battled. It was as though the sword had evolved, become more shield than blade. When the Scourge fought for her, he became the wall between she and the rest of the world. His dance spoke the simple truth, told all who wanted to chance their luck one absolute fact: no one would ever touch her again.”

  —BORN OF THE DAHGÜN BONE, AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  IT WAS as though the Moon herself had blessed his descent.

  Like the gods had heard his prayers, heard his pleas and understood his need for haste, the storm quailed within twenty minutes of Raz’s clambering start down the pass. At first it was the snows that abated, clearing his view and making it easier to skirt the loose stone and leap over the icy patches. Then it was the wind’s turn to die, stilling to a bare breeze that Raz hardly felt as he dropped from one section of the path to the next, ten, twenty, thirty feet at a time, wings spread wide to slow his falls.

  Then, as though in final benediction, the clouds themselves thinned, allowing patches of true Moonlight to pepper the snow and rocks and cliffs about him as he plunged towards the forest far below with all the speed and urgency of an avalanche.

  Raz didn’t feel the burn in his legs as he moved, didn’t feel the ache in his chest as mountain air flooded his lungs. He didn’t notice it getting warmer, or his breathing coming easier as the atmosphere thickened. Nothing existed for him. Not the snow, not the icy stone beneath his feet, not the ledges he swung himself around and over, or even the cliffs he leapt and launched himself from into open air to land dozens of feet below. He became unaware of the world around him, unaware of the existence of more than a single thing beyond the mountain.

  Syrah.

  At first, as he’d started down the path once more, Raz had tried to make a plan, tried to steady himself and his rage. He had felt the tickle of an old, familiar terror in the back of his mind, but he’d beaten it back, trying to maintain control as he descended. With conscious effort he considered all the variables of the situation he was about to throw himself into, focusing with all his might on one factor at a time.

  But, as though mirroring his own descent along the mountainside, reason
soon began to fade, cracked by the memories of the sounds he heard as echoes inside his head. The laughter and pleasures of the man, the voices of his friends, and the muffled, pained cries that could only have come from the white-haired woman.

  Syrah.

  The animal, for the first time in Raz’s life, rose slowly, steadily. As he dropped from bend to bend, leaping down entire flights of stairs, trusting his clawed feet to hold firm against the ice, Raz didn’t realize he had lost the fight. His mind preoccupied by the face of the woman from his dreams, he didn’t notice the darkness falling, the bloodlust rising up within him. In the end, it took him less than three hours to make his way down the mountain path, the evergreens appearing and growing thicker as he got lower and lower, the glare of firelight that marked the base of the stairs bright in the mercifully clear night.

  And it was a long time before that that the scene around Raz became nothing more than contoured shades of red and black, highlighting the cool, calm sway of the pines.

  Bjen al’Hayrd was not flush with pride at his new assignment as commander of the sentries along the base of the blasphemers’ pass. He was not fretful, nor anxious or worrisome. Bjen al’Hayrd had been a warrior of the Kregoan clan for far too long to still be plagued by such weaknesses, such frailties that needed to be beaten out of boys before they could truly be considered men. His was a toughened spirit, sympathetic to the Kayle and his cause, and he had been among the first to take a knee as the giant that was Gûlraht Baoill began to demand fealty from the western tribes.

  He had also been present when Vores Göl—the man whose position he had succeeded—had thrown himself into the fire in order to escape a coward’s death.

  And Bjen had no intention of echoing the man’s failures.

  “Eyes open, goat,” he growled while making his rounds, cuffing a Gähs archer who looked to be nodding off at his post. The Goatman jerked and blinked around at him in fear, muttering something in the dialect of his clan before ducking swiftly out of the way, his bow held tight to his chest in both hands.

  Bjen grinned at the man’s retreating back, the movement twisting the scars on his cheeks that cut spirals through the brown hair of his beard and shifted the carved finger-bones that pierced the bridge of his nose between his dark eyes. Bjen was big, even for a man of the mountain clans, and had always enjoyed the command his height and breadth won him, especially from the more slender tribes like the Gähs or the Velkrin.

  There is no place for the weak among the strong, he thought, turning and continuing his inspection.

  Kareth Grahst himself had given Bjen command of a full score of men, picked for their skills and utility. Grahst, it was rumored, was the new favorite of the Kayle following his defeat and capture of the infamous White Witch, and so Bjen had seen this promotion as a good sign of his own advancement in the new order of man the Kayle would soon put in control of the North. He moved about the camp with confidence, giving orders and hefting his twin axes at any who looked in danger of dozing off. Men moved about him in pairs, some trading shifts with those posted along the bottom stairs of the path, others bearing armfuls of dry wood carried across the dark from the Arocklen for the half-dozen fires he’d had built in a wide circle around them. He kept them lively, kept his warriors on their toes and constantly moving, refusing to allow them to settle or get comfortable.

  Bjen was not about to be taken by surprise, as Vores Göl had allowed himself to be.

  Thinking of the tales he had heard, Bjen turned southward, looking towards the Woods. He could see nothing, of course, the night beyond the fires painted black to his eyes by the light, but he imagined he could make out the line of trees, watching them shift in the faint breeze. He wondered again—for the hundredth time, in fact—what magics the sorcerer must have woven to sneak so easily past the camp. He’d heard the tale of the beast over and over again, spewed in keening screams from the mouths of the last men who had stood sentry over this very spot. Kareth Grahst had explained to him, when granting Bjen the command, his suspicions of how he believed one of the Priests had conjured the demon to do his fighting for him. It was a thought that had made Bjen’s blood boil, as any man not capable of fighting for himself didn’t deserve to be called a man at all.

  “More wolves. You’d think they’d have learned to run off by now.”

  Recognizing the voice, Bjen turned away from the hidden tree line and looked around. A pair of men, one Kregoan and one Amreht, were standing a half-dozen feet away, peering west and north through the dark. They appeared to be scrutinizing the indistinct mountainside, searching the bluffs above their heads for something.

  “Dolf,” Bjen said, moving towards the two and addressing the Kregoan, whom he knew, “what’s this about wolves?”

  Dolf Rohn was short for a man of his tribe, but half again as broad. He had the look of a wall, squat and thick, with a black beard and brows that were marred by carved lines that stroked vertically down his cheeks and forehead. His bottom lip was pierced by a pair of curved ribs that had been cut and filed into twin points, then braided into the hairs of his chin.

  “Vahlen says he thinks he saw something coming down along the cliffs, from on high,” Dolf told Bjen, looking around and shrugging a shoulder at the Amreht as his commander approached. “I said it had to be an animal, if it came through the rocks.”

  Bjen frowned, looking to Dolf’s companion. He didn’t know the Amreht—nor did he have any particular fondness for his kind, given they had practically had to be beaten into submission by the Kayle—but Vahlen’s words concerned him.

  Wolves didn’t generally hunt in the mountains. There wasn’t enough game to make it worth the energy.

  “What did you see?” he asked the man, studying Vahlen as he did. The Amreht’s skin was painted with traditional dyes, splitting his face down the middle. One side was clean and pockmarked, while the other was a solid shade of bright red, a feature believed by their tribe to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies.

  To Bjen, it looked more like the foolish powders the women of the valley towns were sometimes known to wear.

  But Vahlen, to his credit, struck no effeminate air as he spoke. He met Bjen’s eyes confidently, nodding briefly in respect as he answered.

  “Too big to be a wolf,” he said simply. “Came right off the path, through that clump of trees there.” He pointed upward, to a spot some thirty yards off and ten up, where a thicket of spruces stood, barely distinguishable at the edge of the casted light. “More like a bear, if anything.”

  Bjen studied the copses and the sheer cliffs around them. A bear was more likely, he thought, but bears tended to hole themselves up when the freeze came. Still, it was early enough into winter, so it was certainly possible, not to mention ursali were not known to hibernate as soundly as their smaller cousins…

  Bjen decided it wasn’t worth the assumption.

  “Dolf,” he said, speaking to the Kregoan but not looking away from the mountain, “take four of the Goatmen and see what you can find. If it’s a bear there’ll be tracks, and the goats will sniff it out.”

  He saw Dolf nod from the corner of his eye, then turn and lumber off, shouting to a group of Gähs sitting huddled by one of the fires nearby. Not long after, the five of them were pressing out beyond the ring of the flames, the Gähs moving easily despite the deep snow, Dolf huffing and cursing behind them, a broad, two-handed claymore drawn and bare over one shoulder as he struggled to keep up, a torch held high in the other hand.

  Bjen and Vahlen stood at the edge of the camp, watching the group move. Others joined them, the half-dozen men not assigned to be on watch, and for once Bjen didn’t shout at them to get back to work, too preoccupied was he with knowing what the Goatmen might discover.

  It was a minute or so before the group of five reached the base of the cliffs, directly under the trees Vahlen had indicated. For several seconds Bjen could see them milling around, scouring the ground and rocks, illuminated in the glow of Dolf’s sin
gle torch.

  And then, so unexpectedly Bjen might have blinked and missed it, the light went out.

  “What the—?” Bjen began as he heard confused questions being shouted by the Gähs in the distance, his hands dropping instinctively to the axes he kept on each hip.

  Then the weapons were out and bare, because a single long, drawn out scream cracked through the dark, shattering the peace of the night.

  “WALL!” Bjen roared, smashing his axes together like an alarm bell as Vahlen ripped a longsword and dagger from his hips beside him. “TO ME! WALL!”

  At once the men around him responded, surging from all around to form a staggered, curved line along the edge of the ring of cleared snow as more screams hammered them from across the night. There were shouts, yells of horror, and another keening screech of pain that lingered, then ended abruptly. For several seconds Bjen and his wall stood silent, weapons held aloft, archers with arrows knocked and ready, aimed at the ground until it was time to draw. All around him Bjen could feel the men shifting nervously, and even he couldn’t help his eyes from darting about the blackness, looking for a sign of whatever it was he should be expecting.

  Then, as though on cue, he made out the rapid sounds of boots crunching through deep snow, approaching at a breakneck pace.

  “Hold,” he hissed as one of the archers began to lift his bow. He had just made out what sounded like hard, ragged breathing, coupled with whimpers of sheer terror.

  If there was a survivor, he didn’t want him accidently riddled with arrows before he could explain what had happened.

  “There,” Vahlen said, pointing with his knife. Sure enough, the ghostly form of a fox skull had just manifested out of the dark, the man whose head it helmed appearing shortly after. He was running through the snow as fast as he could, sending powder flying everywhere as he flailed and stumbled.