The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy

by Jack Conner

  Giorn led his men over the shoulder of a certain mountain and up the slopes of Triathad, the mountain where Hielsly lay. That fair city was on the far side, the southern slope, keeping eternal watch on the Aragst. Giorn warned his men to be careful and sent scouts to range far ahead; if Hielsly was near, so too was the enemy. He could feel them even more strongly now. The hackles on the back of his neck rose higher, and gooseflesh covered his arms. He heard his men muttering prayers under their breaths to Brunril and Illiana.

  As he was picking his way up the slope and along a dirt road that ran through the mountain forest, he was startled by cries of alarm, then cursing and bellowing in Oslogon. A lone Borchstog, its wrists chained together, was dragged through the dripping pines and deposited before him. The creature, like all of its race, possessed eyes as red as hell and flesh as black as death. Resembling a man greatly in aspect, it stood tall and strong, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, but its face was a thing of horror –- demonic and loathsome, with thick, sharp teeth, a flat, broad nose, countless scars and tattoos, and, of course, those red, burning eyes. Its black, oily hair fell in a lank mane over its shoulders.

  “We found this one and several others guarding the crest,” said the soldier that had brought the Borchstog. He was the captain of Giorn’s advance scouts and did not have to say what the fates of the other Borchstogs had been.

  “Then that must mean we’re very near the main host,” Giorn said. “Good.” To the Borchstog, he said, “Do you speak Havensril?”

  It spat on the ground at his horse’s hooves. In a rough but intelligible voice, it said, “Death to all the sons of the First Men!”

  Acting with shocking swiftness and violence, it sprang into action. All the time it had been quietly bunching its arms, pulling at its chains, but now Giorn saw that this was with purpose. For, with lightning speed, it now pulled so hard with one arm that the other was wrenched loose from its socket. There came a horrid, gristly ripping sound. Black blood spurted, and the creature roared in agony, but even as it did it was leaping at Giorn. It swung its severed arm like a club. The redness of its eyes blazed like hellfire.

  Giorn dodged the swipe of its arm. Kicked the creature in the chest. It fell back. By that point his men had recovered from their shock and had skewered the Borchstog in a dozen places. Its black blood sprayed the ground.

  Even so, the thing never removed its gaze from Giorn’s. The rage in its eyes faded and at last died, but still those eyes met his, even as it sagged to the ground. It was a sight Giorn doubted he would ever forget.

  “What shall we do with it, my lord?” panted the scout captain when the Borchstog was dead.

  “It was a noble warrior,” Giorn said, honestly moved by the creature’s devotion to its cause, “but it was evil, through and through. Throw it off the nearest cliff.”

  Giorn led on. He sent out more scouts, but no more Borchstog sentries were found. He only hoped that the individuals of the main Borchstog host did not all possess the spirit of that one.

  At last he led his soldiers to the crest of the mountain and stared down at the besieged city of Hielsly, a thick-walled place of splendors that sat on the very slope of the mountain. It sprawled up and down and side to side, hugging the crags and fissures, embracing the springs that bubbled up from below. Its people were known to sing songs to the hardy trees that grew from the cracks in the rock and to the goats that leapt from crag to crag.

  “Amazing,” Giorn said, sweeping his gaze across the high spires and domes of that mysterious city. Its people were the stuff of legend, bold and adventurous, cleaving to the old ways, before the Crescent became so settled. Their priestesses still danced naked through the streets at night, singing praises to Illiana, Maker and Goddess of the moon. Even from here Giorn could see the priestesses’ great Temple, stabbing up toward the black heavens, its bone-white towers seeming to glow.

  He stared intently at the highest tower, the central one. Its upper chamber shone most fiercely, though it was not a painful glow, but soft and white and moon-like. Supposedly the priestesses here wielded the fabulous Moonstone of song and tale. The myths varied, but according to some Illiana herself had gifted it to them—a final gift to the race of Man before the Omkar turned their back on them for all time. Giorn had never truly believed in the Stone, but Niara said it existed and so he was forced to give the legend the benefit of the doubt.

  It was a marvelous city, but currently masses of Borchstogs huddled in their smoking camps flung about its mighty walls, tainting Hielsly with their very presence. According to the messengers, the Borchstogs had launched their attack nearly two weeks ago, and Giorn could see that they had dug in.

  There were ranks upon ranks of the filthy creatures, many grouped around great bonfires whose columns of smoke rose high into the black sky, blotting out the stars. Looking through a spyglass, Giorn saw that Borchstogs were dancing and cavorting about the pyres, seeming to howl or sing or chant, possibly in some ritual to their Master. Indeed, Giorn saw bodies of still-moving human captives be thrown upon the fires, and he ground his teeth as the Borchstogs lifted their heads and howled.

  Other Borchstogs were gathered in the torture parks, where Giorn saw rows and rows of posts the creatures had erected, surely cut from the forests of the region, and upon each post writhed a naked human captive, still living, still bleeding. The Borchstogs prodded them with lances, whipped them with barbed whips, flayed strips of skin off them with knives, and cut others down for rape and mutilation. Giorn, who could stand no more, handed the spyglass back to Hanen, his second-in-command.

  “The siege ends tonight,” Giorn said, feeling sweat stand on his brow.

  Hanen, his own eyes hard as he stared down upon the Borchstog forces, simply nodded.

  Giorn dispatched scouts to mark the Borchstog positions, then consulted with his generals to devise their plan of attack. At Giorn’s direction, soldiers rolled boulders to the brink of the many short cliffs that lined the upper reaches of the mountain. When they were in position, Giorn shouted, “Now!”

  The soldiers shoved the boulders over, and Giorn watched eagerly as the great stones, covered in moss and dirt and severed roots, rolled and bounced and clattered down the cliffs and slopes, sending up plumes of dirt. The Borchstogs stirred and pointed. Some set up a cry and there was much pushing and shoving to get out of the way, but for many it was too late. The boulders tore straight into the thick of the camps, killing and scattering the demons by the scores. They abandoned their pyres. They abandoned their victims. Giorn’s men laughed.

  But he was far from done. To further the Borchstogs’ disarray, Giorn now directed his archers, positioned further down the slope. “Fire at will!” he said.

  They loosed their arrows, slaying the hellspawn even as they scrambled out of the way of the bouncing boulders. Along the cliffs, Giorn’s men laughed even louder, watching the demons flee and fall and be ground to paste, watching the bonfires spark and explode as boulders smashed through them.

  Only then, when the Borchstogs’ formations were utterly shattered, did Giorn turn to his riders and say, “To war!”

  “To war!”

  He led the three thousand riders down from the peak to clear a path to the northern gates of Hielsly. His heart leapt into his throat as he thundered into the midst of the Borchstogs. They spread like a black sea all around him, howling for his flesh, their red eyes burning into him, their white teeth flashing, their tar-black faces flickering by the light of the bonfires. The stench of rotting meet nearly gagged him.

  A lance whirled by his head. An arrow glanced off his helm, setting his ears to ringing. Another embedded itself in his saddle. The Borchstogs pressed in close. He spurred his horse on, grinding the creatures beneath its hooves.

  His sword hacked chests, cleaved in skulls and drank deep of black blood, but at last the Borchstogs pressed in too close and Giorn lifted his horn and blew three short notes.

  At once, three of his generals, leading more
troops, speared into the Borchstog ranks from three different directions, inciting even greater chaos and fear among the Oslogon ranks. Giorn heard a Borchstog horn blow, long and loud, and gradually the Borchstogs broke away from the fighting and withdrew, leaving a battlefield scarred by fire and filth and corpses, both man and demon.

  Giorn’s men cheered and gathered to him at his call. By that time Hielsly had responded and its lord, Baron Oscrin Hysthir, brought a host out to assist Giorn in pursuing the Borchstogs and driving them away. Giorn and the Baron chased them through the forest of pines and eucalyptus that stretched south of the city, at last sending the Borchstogs fleeing over the cliffs and down their ropes. Giorn laughed as he chopped through one rope, sending two-score Borchstogs plunging to their deaths in the forests below. Their screams soothed something deep inside him, and for the first time in days he began to breathe easy.

  Only when the rout was complete did the victorious armies return to the fields occupied by the Borchstogs, take down the men and women tied to poles, find the young girls and boys tied by chains to the ground in the Borchstog captains’ tents, and begin the process of gathering and sorting the dead. The Borchstog dead were thrown into a huge mound, doused with oil and burned on the spot. The stench was awful, but at the same time sweet, and the Illiana priestesses said prayers over the burning to drive away the taint the creatures had left behind them. The flames were still licking high into black night as Giorn and his men were led inside the thick walls of Hielsly.

  A mug of ale was shoved into Giorn’s hand, and he laughed and drank even as he climbed down from his mount. They were in a crowded courtyard dominated by a tiered fountain spurting crystal-clear water—spring water, Giorn knew—high into the chill air. The spring was hot, and steam rose off the water in misty curtains. He appreciated its warmth in the cold night.

  Baron Hysthir, a barrel-chested man with a thick beard and a booming laugh, embraced Giorn tightly. The Baron, though hardy, was missing his left arm—lost to Borchstogs in some battle long ago—but his hug nearly cracked Giorn’s ribs.

  “Thank the Omkar you came! I feared the ‘stogs had intercepted all my messengers.”

  “A few got through,” Giorn said. “Brave men.”

  “Bless them! And you! Without you we would have been overrun.”

  “Fiarth would never have let that happen.”

  The Baron’s expression sobered, even as men laughed and celebrated all around. “I heard about your father. How does he fare?”

  “The healer tells me there is little hope.”

  “That’s terrible. But—and don’t take this the wrong way—he’s an old man. He’s led a good life, and a full one. We should all be so lucky. Hopefully he will join his bride beyond the Lights of Sifril. He deserves the rest.” Hysthir clapped Giorn on the shoulder. “Now come. I will set you up at the castle for the night.”

  “No, I’ll stay with my men. We’ll camp outside the walls.”

  “Nonsense! I won’t have our city’s heroes so treated.”

  “You haven’t enough space, and our horses . . .”

  Lord Hysthir’s eyes shone. “Hielsly may look cramped, my friend, but we’ve found ways to fill every nook and cranny, and there are many of those. It’s near an art with us. Now come! We’ll feast and celebrate. You’ll be our guest of honor.”

  So it was. There was singing and merriment, and Giorn enjoyed the hospitality of the Baron and his people. The warrior-priestesses of Illiana, so valuable in times of war, came round and gave kisses on the cheek to Giorn’s men, and their kisses renewed the soldiers. Some said the priestesses’ power came from the Moonstone, but even if the Stone did exist Giorn half believed those tales were more myth than fact—useful in keeping the superstitious Borchstogs at bay but no more. Still, he accepted his kiss when it came, and felt lighter and more peaceful after.

  And these priestesses, he reminded himself, were fully human and not blessed with traces of elvish blood, as was Niara; nor did they possess the numerous small charms that Niara’s sisters bore. Something had to give them such power. Man was fallen and without Grace, the high arts of the elves denied them.

  Thinking on it, he ate and drank and allowed himself to be light of heart. That night after the feast he danced with one girl after another in the grand courtyard before the castle. Statues of ancient barons on rearing horses loomed all about, as well as fair maidens standing tall. His soldiers drank and danced, too, and music drifted through the night. It was a gay time, and he was content.

  But just as he was thinking about retiring for the evening, denying the invitations of the Baron’s youngest daughter, warning horns sounded from along the walls, and Giorn’s blood froze.

  “Borchstogs!” soldiers cried out. “The Borchstogs are attacking!”

  Giorn, half-stumbling, met up with the Baron and together they mounted the south-facing arc of the wall beside the South Gate. Side by side, they stared out at the night.

  “There!” Giorn said, pointing.

  A roiling dark mass swept up through the forests that marched south of the city, disturbing the trees as though a great monster were climbing toward Hielsly. And presently Giorn saw that this was so. It was not one monster, but many: the Borchstogs rode their great Serpents, the massive eel-like creatures known as gaurocks that could stretch a hundred yards long and more.

  There were four of them, and each bore at least fifty Borchstogs. More Borchstogs came up behind. Thousands. Giorn could see the starlight glinting off their helms as they poured like a foul tide past the bases of towering eucalyptus.

  “How?” the Baron said. “The mountain walls’re too steep for gaurocks.”

  “This is no idle attack, then,” Giorn said. This is what he had feared, what he had known in his heart since he had first heard the news of Borchstogs claiming that the Time of Grandeur was approaching. Raugst, he thought. This all has to do with Raugst. “They’ve planned this,” he heard himself say. “They must have erected cranes, scaffolds, slings . . .”

  The Baron’s voice came in a hoarse whisper, and he spoke like a man in a dream: “Yes, sentries have gone missing lately. I suspected an attack was brewing, but this . . . they could destroy us.”

  “Vrulug has wanted it for ages, I know.”

  The Serpents drew closer. Giorn heard drumbeats from the Borchstog host. Boom. Boom. Boom. Steady, rhythmic, inexorable. There was something in that drumming that sapped the strength, drained the will.

  “Aye,” the Baron was saying at his side. “But Vrulug knew it would be too costly for him. He might break us, but we would cripple him in the doing.” The Baron’s eyes flashed with heat. “And we still shall, by the gods.”

  “Vrulug must have received reinforcements from Oslog.”

  “If that’s true, lad, if the Dark One has turned his gaze our way . . .”

  As the enemy neared, Giorn saw that each of the giant gaurocks wore an iron helmet with three long iron spikes on the end.

  “They’re going to ram the walls!”

  He braced himself. All around him, soldiers cried out in alarm. The screams of women and children echoed off the buildings behind. Lord Hysthir’s curses filled the air.

  The gaurocks charged, shaking the earth with their passage. Moonlight glimmered off dark green scales and on the hunched armored figures that clung to their ridged backs. The Borchstogs howled, eager for blood, rape and ruin. Giorn remembered the one who had ripped off its arm to beat him with and knew they were devoted utterly to their Master. They considered themselves mere extensions of His will.

  The Serpents lowered their heads, and the iron spikes glinted by the light of the pyre even then roasting the bodies of the Borchstogs slaughtered in the first battle. The spikes would crack even the thick stone of the Hielsly wall. The gaurocks drew nearer, and Giorn could see the red eyes of the Borchstog riders. Any second now—

  The Illiana priestesses stepped forward. Mixed among the soldiery upon the wall, they now summoned unearthly
strength. A white glow suffused them—like angels, Giorn thought. And yet they held no gem, no elvish artifacts. They must be channeling power from the Stone. He spared a moment to glance over his shoulder to the great Temple of Illiana and its central spire; as the priestesses upon the wall began to glow, the light emanating from the Temple’s central spire waned, just slightly. He turned back.

  The priestesses stretched out their hands. White light burst from their palms, lances of energy that struck the gaurocks full in the head.

  Smoke rose from the beasts’ skulls. They shrieked—a sound that raised the hairs on the back of Giorn’s neck—and slowed. The Borchstogs prodded them on, lashing them with whips and sticking them with barbed lances.

  The priestesses pressed their attack. The white beams intensified. Flames licked from the gaurocks’ heads. Several shrieked and thrashed—dying. Giorn allowed himself to hope that Hielsly might yet be saved. In their death throes, the Serpents’ dark green coils roiled and heaved, crushing the Borchstogs that rode them like vermin. The ground shook and dust obscured the stars.

  One got through. Huge, monstrous, the gaurock actually blasted through the mountainous bonfire that was roasting the bodies of a thousand Borchstogs, spraying fire and burning corpses everywhere. A flaming Borchstog sailed right over Giorn’s head, and he had to duck. Even so he felt the heat of its passing.

  The gaurock rammed the wall with such force that its iron spikes broke from the impact.

  The wall heaved. Fifty yards away, Giorn was pitched off his feet by the concussion. Stumbling, cursing, he climbed back up, as did the Baron and the soldiers around them.

  “Hells!” snapped Lord Hysthir.

  The dust from the impact was just clearing, but even so Giorn could see what Hysthir meant.