by Ethan Spears
Fury Lingers
By Ethan Spears
Edition 1.0
© 2018
Fury Lingers
Book one of the Foreseen Trilogy
Book one of the Aden Collection
Edition 1.0
© 2018 Ethan Spears
[email protected]
Cover art © 2016 Stephen Rocktaschel and used with permission
Published on Amazon.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Ethan Spears asserts a moral right to be identified as the author of this work and any other work of the Foreseen Trilogy and/or Aden Collection.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, including names, likenesses, and personalities, are purely from the imagination of the author. Any similarities to any person, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Intermission I
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13a
Intermission II
Chapter 13b
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Intermission III
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Prologue
A soldier looked out over his burning city.
Flaming detritus littered the streets where it had been flung by catapults. The smell of charred trees and bodies was thick below, as were the cries of the scared and dying, but up in his tower, the wind held only a hint of smoke and the threat of snow. The winter left him cold inside and out, but he stared out into the night sky above the enemy’s siege camps, his head full of exhausted half-thoughts, each falling limp before they could fully form. When he tried to focus on one, his body swayed dangerously, for if every conscious effort weren’t used to stay on his feet, he would quickly collapse to the stones.
He wasn’t sure if that meant the floor of the tower room, or the castle roof four stories below.
He also wasn’t sure if it would be an accident.
But he still had reason to live, for the moment. As soul-sick as this short and bloody war had made him, he still had a purpose.
But so did they, his mind nagged as his eyes fell to those people below. Though near midnight, fires in the town and abroad lit the scene below like ghastly candles, highlighting the few people who were still fervently packing their families onto wagons or making to leave on foot, distant specks of frenetic action from the tower’s vantage. This city had purpose.
But ours is higher, his mind retorted to itself. He shook his head to clear it, worried he was going mad from fatigue and bloodshed. He needed to focus, not argue with himself.
Footsteps snapped him back to reality. The sound of leather boots told him it wasn’t a soldier. The pace told him it wasn’t a noble. A page with news. The steps echoed up the stairs from some unknown distance below, but the drafty, spiraling staircase carried sound seemingly forever. The boy could be just outside the door, or ten stories below. His mind wasn’t in the place to know for sure.
The soldier had his role to play. He was a beacon, even if he never chose to be. He picked up the pitcher of water on the little wooden table with one hand, then paused, forgetting for a moment what he intended to do as his mind fogged over. He tried to blink the fatigue from his dry, burning eyes and remembered at length the next action. He reached past the chair and grasped for his war hammer. The head was so slathered in blood that it shone crimson despite enough having dripped off to form a sizeable puddle, the uniform red broken only by the occasional white of bone and the pink of brain. It was like the weapon craved to be coated in gore.
He poured the water over the hammer, cleaning it as best he could in the seconds he had before it was seen in that state by some poor denizen of the castle. The pulpy slurry flowed over the floor, finding its way to the cracked and broken bricks of the caved-in floor. The bluish hue of the steel began to show through.
He was unsatisfied with the cleanliness of the weapon but spared the rest of the water for a quick drink, then dumped the last few mouthfuls over his head, running a hand through hair that was already wet, and he knew it wasn’t just sweat. His hand came away red. He wiped it dry on his tabard.
He gave himself one last look in the mirror. His face, usually stoic and handsome, stared back dumbly, filthy, and frazzled, taking his forty-five years and twisting his features into those of a man much older. His hair had already been graying, but now was coated in enough dust that, even after his dousing, he looked as old as he felt. His eyes were bagged with fatigue and his skin managed somehow to both sag and hug his skull like a man starved, but the application of a forced smile hid the worst of it. It couldn’t hide the stubble, but he just had to accept that.
When the room’s door was thrown open, the page found a tall figure, gallant as a man could look given the circumstances. His hammer was firm in hand, his armor as shining as could be managed, and his face bearing a reassuring if grim smile.
The man was trying to appear statuesque, though the effect may have been lost on the young page as he nearly rolled into the room, stopping just short of toppling onto the soldier.
“Lord Zeion,” the boy choked, tears leaving dirty trails down his already smoke-stained face. “It’s all for naught! The walls are breached, sir! The walls are breached! The defensive line is holding for now, but the orcs will reach the castle in a matter of minutes!” Though the lad used language proper for the man he was addressing, he spoke in near hysterics, the words barely intelligible through snotty, teary sobbing. “Sir, please! You must take the Lady to safety! The escort is already assembled at the western postern!” His message delivered, the boy reverted to pure, guttural weeping.
Zeion could barely look at him. For all his attempts to maintain the appearance of the stalwart, he couldn’t stomach looking at the primal pain of a boy, barely fourteen, who felt certain he was going to die.
And the boy was almost certainly correct.
For a week they had anticipated the strike, received reports, each more dire than the last, hoping against hope that this city would hold where others had fallen. And if any city were to hold, why shouldn't it be this one? Azurcourt was the staunchest city of men in Nilriel, perhaps all of Aden, even with its flaws. But these beasts were no average horde in need of food, water, and rest. Even the dullest of peasants would know they were orcs, an enemy Zeion had dispatched with ease on dozens of occasions. But now there was a demonic frenzy is them, the stuff of tales old housewives told their misbehaving children before putting them to bed, or that warriors swore they heard from a friend’s friend, not the sort of thing men expected to see with their own eyes. And so they
held the city, but they had a contingency should the worst happen.
It was foolish to think they would never put that plan to action.
Zeion stood uncertain, a feeling he was unused to. His armor and joints creaked in unison as he moved to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, a gesture meant to steady both of them.
“How long have I been up here?” he asked vacantly. He realized he meant to say something reassuring, but somehow that came out instead.
The page answered promptly as his rank demanded. “I’m afraid you’ve had less than two hours of sleep, sir.”
Zeion grunted and looked at the bed. He hadn’t touched it, hadn’t even wrinkled the sheets. “Forty hours on the wall and the moment I pause for rest, the whole damn thing comes down.”
The boy looked pathetically apologetic as though it were all his fault. “Sorry, sir. A section of the wall suffered multiple breaches by catapults and the rest they tore down with their bare hands. The orcs are charging through the gaps.”
“More catapults?” Zeion turned to what was left of the tower’s wall behind him. No more than a dozen paces behind his chair was a gaping hole, a gash twenty feet across and trailing down several stories, the victim of the first wave of siege the orcs wheeled forth. A group of horsemen had ridden out and burnt those catapults, though not one man returned. They delayed the inevitable by at least a day, but they couldn’t stop it.
That he did not know of the catapults before leaving for rest spoke ill either of his abilities or of the defenses of the city. On the one hand, he should have spotted the activity that would have hinted at the construction of siege equipment, whether falling trees, diversionary tactics, or soldier and camp placement. On the other, Azurcourt sat at the heart of the kingdom, its need for siege defense forgotten through long ages of relative peace and domination of the land. They had let the forests grow too close to the city and the trees hid the siegeworks well enough on their own. Azurcourt’s nigh-impregnable walls fell more to their complacency than any hurled stones.
“Lord Zeion, please! The time,” said the page desperately.
Zeion shook himself, struggling to keep his mind focused and his eyes open. The page was right: Zeion wasn’t giving the circumstances the seriousness they deserved. Here he was concerned with theatrics and his appearance when orcs were already pouring over the wall. With the speed he had seen these creatures display, they might reach the castle in a handful of minutes. Or they might become distracted and take an hour. It was difficult to gauge as these orcs were near mindless mounds of muscle and rage, their bloodlust precluding strategy. They might rush toward the heart of the city and thus the castle itself, or they might occupy themselves with murdering the hapless citizens who had stayed until it was too late.
He studied the page. He was an older boy, practically a young man, likely a page in this castle for years, but for the life of him, Zeion could not recognize the face, nor conjure a name. Instead, he tightened his hand on the page’s shoulder. “Make your way out of the city, boy. Your work here is done. Flee to the woods in the west and don’t look back. Spread the word to every soul you pass to abandon the city.” He brushed past the boy, gave him a single reassuring pat on the back. He doubted the page would survive, nor anyone else in the city without a horse to outpace the orcs, but that didn’t stir him in the slightest. There was only one person here important to him and her survival grew more precarious as he dawdled. He descended the stairs.
As he hurried down and around the tower’s winding steps, he passed the missing stones and battered steps the prior assault had left. Outside, twelve hundred years of history burned to ashes. Rather than concern himself with the plight of the people below, Zeion searched for orcs, finding none swarming the streets as of yet. What few defenders at the walls who still lived must be putting up a hell of a defense, but it was only a matter of time.
On the second floor, he took a hallway towards the rear of the castle, passing frightened nobles and volunteers who were carrying wounded soldiers with them as they fled, tripping over each other and weeping as they did what they could to get everyone to safety, though few had any hope. Still, like good little servants to the three crowns, they worked feverishly to complete their tasks.
Many looked heartened as Zeion strode past, but his eyes were set on his destination. Calls for help with stretchers and requests for covering escapes were ignored. He turned a corner and saw the wooden double doors that he had strode through nearly every morning for the past thirteen years, the beauty of its familiar golden knocker and intricately carved surface inappropriately garish given the circumstance. He pushed them open without knocking.
He was barely a step inside the room when a young woman threw herself into his chest, squashing her face to his steel armor.
“Addy!” she cried, her voice barely under control. “Is it true? Are Hemel and Eckel dead?”
Her question was another punch to the stomach in a week that had already pummeled his guts. Word had reached them via fleeing refugees, but Zeion had been too busy with preparations for the siege to speak with her since news arrived. The other Triarchs were like brothers to her and he had no little affection for them himself, so he shared a good measure of her pain. He knew it was nothing like the sorrow she must feel. She had grown up knowing only those two, Zeion, and a handful of teachers, but right now he only cared that she was alive. “Rosemont and Whiteplains fell many days ago, Lady Mira,” he confirmed. He wanted to lie to her, but she no doubt already knew the truth herself. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, resting his chin on her head “Though I do not know their fates for certain, it is unlikely they survived.”
Had any other man embraced Mira like that, they would have been in shackles by the end of the hour, but all in the castle knew that, while Zeion loved her deeply, it was akin to the love of a father for his daughter. She found comfort in his arms a moment, then pulled out of his embrace and looked up at him. “Fate is cruel but, as my teachers would say, ‘a Triarch must always carry on.’”
Zeion’s chest tightened. Her face, normally youthful and vibrant, was blotched with mud and blood from where she pressed into his filthy armor. Her eyes were red, her skin stretched and gaunt from sleeplessness and crinkled with worries someone her age had no business having, even a leader of nations. Her long auburn hair, usually carefully combed and styled by her servants, had been left loose and tangled from fits of tossing in her bed, and her personal chambermaids had long since been sent out to render aid as nurses and cooks at the wall. They, too, were probably dead.
He looked at where she pressed into his armor, stained as it was with blood and many things that were unidentifiable. His unkempt face he could accept, but he was ashamed to let his equipment be seen by Lady Mira in anything less than perfect condition. Some might call it vanity, but he felt deeply that his mere presence in this state was an insult to her. But time offered no reprieve to clean himself and Mira would, at the very least, suffer the insult with dignity.
Zeion felt a powerful, consuming need to protect her, but resisted the unseemly urge to embrace her again. “I will get you away from here, Mira,” he assured her. “No matter what wrath the gods brew for us, I will protect you from it.”
“I don’t know what blasphemies could warrant such cruelty,” she said.
He could almost laugh at her innocence, but it was to be expected for one as sheltered as she. The Triarchs were raised the three together, spending their entire young lives devoted to learning their roles as great leaders of the kingdom of man on Nilriel. Only recently ascended with the death and dissolution of the last Trio earlier that year, she would naturally know much about her kingdom in theory, but little practical. It was shameful to Zeion how many foul blasphemies came immediately to mind, from the utter quashing of the peasants and farmers to the rise of necromancy among the nobility, to the impious plays mocking the work of the gods. He, like many, had felt them wrong but said nothing.
The evil men of the l
and were only aided by the silence of the good.
Zeion shook his head, weary from weeks of reliving failure. “We’ve committed too many to count, my Lady, though I can think of no number to deserve this level of retribution. As things are now, we must move quickly.” He pushed the door wider for her. She passed through meekly and he followed.
They walked swiftly towards the tower again, deafly passing calls for aid, and made their way down. Zeion was pleased to note that she wore leather riding boots, breeches, gloves, and a long-sleeved tunic in place of her usual silk attire, along with a shoulder bag filled with provisions, though she would never be mistaken for an ordinary rider: her body was thin and womanly, her head barely reaching Zeion’s shoulders. And Zeion was by no measure a tall man.
“Bless you for being prepared,” he said, his arm finding her shoulder.
She managed a small smile. “You were so deathly serious when you said we might have to leave at a moment’s notice.” She wiped her face. “Though I wish you could have been with Hemel and Eckel. You could have kept them safe as well.”
“I can only be in one place at one time,” he said, “and that place is between you and those who would do you harm.”
They continued along without speaking. She wept silently, though he pretended not to notice.
They passed through the rear door of the castle and out into the open. The din of clashing weapons and shouts were distant but clear. They broke into a run, moving through the courtyard and the inner walls out into the city proper. The castle itself was situated only forty fields from the west gate, a construction choice made during a long reign of peace, more aesthetic than practical. It seemed foolish now, being placed within range of the catapults that ravaged its face, but with the east wall breached, that was of little consequence.
As they ran down the market street, the sound of pitched battle seemed to close in inextricably on all sides.
