Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels

by David Dalglish

  “Shoggers! Shoggers!” He screamed up a storm, every instant expecting a blade through his heart or slicing into his neck. He was dead and he knew it. Too shogging dead to give a—

  Gore splashed his face, but it wasn’t his own. Least he thought it wasn’t. A sword thrust towards him, but never made it, the bloke holding it going down in a shower of his own blood. A horse whinnied, and there was Justin cutting down the last of them. Barek had to check himself all over. Hardly a scratch. Holy crap he should have been bleeding out on the ground. A miracle. It was a shogging miracle.

  The rest of the knights were among the tents, running down the survivors. A horn sounded to the west and for a moment the fighting ceased. The few remaining soldiers sprinted in the direction of the sound.

  “Leave them,” Gaston shouted. “Let them go.” He walked over to his injured mare and remounted.

  Barek sheathed his sword and found his horse. With a foot in the stirrup and his good hand clutching a fistful of mane, he half-pulled, half-rolled into the saddle.

  “You did well, Barek.” Gaston rode over and slapped him on the shoulder. “You too, Justin.”

  Wheeling the mare to face the Old Sarum Road, Gaston stood high in the stirrups, face flushed, eyes blazing.

  “Now let’s go let our brothers and sisters in Nous know that Ain has answered their prayers.”

  Barek looked about at the carnage, the stench of blood thick in his nostrils. He rubbed his dead arm, twitched the fingers, and winced at the prickling return of circulation. Right now he didn’t reckon the White Order was an answer to anyone’s prayers.

  * * *

  The Old Sarum Road was little more than a dirt track through the bush. A few hundred yards along it a volley of arrows hissed down, thudding into horses and riders. A shaft glanced from Gaston’s armor as he beat his ailing mare into a gallop that took him beyond the range of the archers. The troop followed, another volley ripping into them and claiming three more riders.

  Gaston slowed to a canter as the road merged with another, pock-marked and gray, with glinting studs of silver forming a broken line down its center. The clopping of hooves announced their arrival to the tin-roofed shacks on the fringes of Sarum, but there was no throng to greet them. No reason why there would be, he supposed. Wasn’t as if the city cared a shit about the will of Nous.

  Gaston drew rein and watched the column pass, counting the survivors and noting the injured. Thirty-nine knights, many carrying minor wounds. One—Tray Vogen from Broken Bridge—had the flight of an arrow-shaft jutting from his shoulder. Despite the botched charge, Gaston was more than pleased with their performance. Their training had paid off against the imperial troops. Ain had favored his own. You had to see it as vindication.

  The column of knights rode swiftly through the southern suburbs, past scatterings of masked and desperate people scavenging amongst the refuse. They crossed the Kaldus Bridge and came to the Arch of Foundation, marking the southern access to the city center. The first and last time Gaston had seen it he’d been a child, clutching his dad’s hand. The memory was sharp as a dagger thrust. Seemed like it had been only yesterday. He could hear Dad’s voice bubbling up from the depths, like it was muffled by fog: This is not the way… Not the way.

  A ragged group of militiamen jogged towards them, spears leveled, shields reflecting the glare of the sun. Gaston signaled his knights to stop, Barek and Justin riding alongside him as the militia formed up and locked shields. A stocky man, red-faced and mustached, stepped forwards, chainmail clinking, boots squeaking.

  “Captain Harding, City Militia,” he barked in a gruff voice, blinking ten to the dozen. “Will you stand down?”

  Gaston leaned over the pommel of his saddle. “Captain, my men are fresh from battle. Are we to take your position as hostile?” He watched the shogger like a hawk. One wrong move, one wrong word and they’d roll over this lot like they did the others.

  Barek raised his hand and the knights began to fan out across the street, hooves clattering sharply on stone.

  “By order of Governor Gen.” Harding coughed to clear his throat. “By order—” he started again, but Gaston cut him off.

  “What’s happening here, Captain? Why do imperial troops surround Sarum?”

  Harding spluttered, the blinking intensifying. “You don’t know?”

  “All I know is we had to fight our way in. Hardly the sort of welcome we were expecting.”

  “Welcome?”

  “We’ve come to aid the Templum of the Knot.”

  Harding stroked his mustache, frowning at the knights, head bobbing. “I don’t know about this. Templum, you say? Come to help with the plague, have you?”

  Gaston sat back in the saddle. “Plague?”

  A murmur spread through the men.

  “City’s quarantined. It’s why you had trouble getting in.”

  Had Aristodeus known about this? Is that what he meant by the Templum needing them? Shader? What could they do? How could they help? Gaston knew next to nothing about healing. Maybe the priests wanted out. Maybe Shader needed them to break the quarantine.

  “Can you take us to the templum?”

  Harding mopped the sweat from his brow and sucked air through gritted teeth. “I need to speak with the governor, but first we should get your men off the streets, tether your horses.”

  They were led deeper and deeper into Sarum along roads flanked by ancient red-brick buildings, and passed beneath immense towers that cast cooling shadows across the city. Finally, Harding stopped them before the iron gates of a large walled enclosure, his men bringing up the rear.

  “This used to be the imperial barracks. They left at the first sign of the plague. You’ll find stabling for your horses and food for your men.”

  “You want to lock us in?” Gaston’s fingers curled around the hilt of his sword. He wouldn’t stand for it. No shogging city militiaman was going to stop him from … stop him from… Ain, he was tired. No, not tired—confused. Dizzy with it. Bloody images erupted like a pustule behind his eyes: severed limbs, gaping wounds, the soldier holding his own entrails, a bewildered look on his face. What had they done? What had he done? Ain’s will. Just doing Ain’s will. It’s what Shader would have done, wasn’t it?

  Harding opened the gates and stood aside. “It would avoid any further misunderstanding. You have my word Governor Gen will hear of this immediately. If your business is with the Templum of the Knot, you won’t find him wholly unsympathetic.”

  Gaston shakily waved the knights through the gate. Once the last rider was within the enclosure, he turned to Harding. “Captain, have you heard of Shadrak, the Unseen?”

  “Everyone has.”

  “Know where to find him?”

  Harding looked from side to side before answering in a hushed voice. “Wouldn’t want to if I could. You don’t want to be worrying about the Sicarii. We’ve got enough problems with this blasted plague.”

  Gaston nodded and followed the others inside. He felt suddenly anxious and uncertain, a little fish in a big pond. Fear of contagion clamored for his attention, challenging his faith and begging the question: would Ain protect them?

  As Harding turned the key in the lock, Rhiannon’s face flashed to mind, scowling with contempt. Gaston swallowed down bile, clutched at his guts. Reeling in the saddle, he fought for control and felt he’d received his answer.

  THE CHILD IN THE ROAD

  Elias scratched his scalp as he rummaged about in the cart. The templum made him feel uneasy, not just all that holier than thou stuff, but the festering patients in the nave. Couldn’t stand all that phlegm and pus. Made him feel so … organic. He had a feeling that the serpent statue would protect him from the plague and yet he couldn’t stop checking his armpits for buboes, and he’d developed a cough he was sure was imaginary.

  In the two days he’d spent at the Templum of the Knot he’d been largely on his tod. Rhiannon had fallen in with her old tutor, Agna, and looked certain to be taking
holy orders as soon as her bruises had healed. He’d briefly met the superior, Mater Ioana, an industrious woman of broad dimensions who seldom slept and rarely rested from her forays into the city. A strange grizzled man, less than five feet tall and sporting a horned helm, accompanied Ioana on her journeys. He had the look of a Nousian about him, only his discolored white cloak sported a red cross rather than a Monas. Elias introduced himself to the dwarf, but was met with a stony stare from fierce violet eyes. There was no hostility, merely a sense of shame, as if he carried a burden impossible to bear. Fat Cadris told Elias the dwarf was called Maldark, but would say little more. There was no need. Elias knew the name from the songs of the Dreamers, and couldn’t say he was pleased to make the acquaintance. Maldark the Unfaithful; Maldark the Doom of Aethir; Maldark the Fallen.

  Soror Velda labored tirelessly in the makeshift infirmary and was seldom available for a chat, which was a shame as she was a sane old bird—or at least as close as you could get to sanity amongst Nousians. Besides the skulking Hugues, who always seemed to be pottering around just within earshot, there was only the sorry figure of Pater Limus, an elderly priest, rotund and white-bearded, who had fallen from a horse the previous winter. Limus could just about recall his own name and repeatedly apologized for not recalling anyone else’s. He became muddled in conversation, and his long pauses in speech invariably resulted in a change of subject that was as frustrating as it was confusing. Nevertheless, Limus was a well-spring of compassion and there was something about him that Elias found authentic, to the extent that he could almost see some value in the Nousian life, but only the way Limus lived it.

  As the sun dipped below Sarum’s great towers, Elias dug out his mandola, sat in the driving seat with his feet up and began to strum. Hector chewed hay nonchalantly, soothed by his music.

  His first trip to Sarum in half a century and he couldn’t say he was enjoying it. He’d never really liked it, even back before the Reckoning, but anything was preferable to the massacre he’d fled.

  It had all been going so well. The Global Garden was bigger than Woodstock—the mythology of which had shaped his childhood—and the message was finally starting to sink in. A bit too much for some, it seemed, as the tank-bots had rolled in and gunships had roared overhead. He’d been lucky to survive, he guessed. A damn sight luckier than Morphic Free-Love, incinerated in the flames of the main stage. Sergeant Sunshine, too, arguably the greatest rock band since Zeppelin, shredded with shrapnel and dropping like crimson bird-shit on their gobsmacked fans.

  The busking years in Sarum had paid the rent, but he’d never really settled until he went outback, finally setting up shop in Broken Bridge, performing at functions and fanning the flames of Sahulian folk music, most of which was already dead and buried and needed re-inventing. It was easy enough to do; folk music was all much of a muchness, and no one knew the first thing about tradition in these parts.

  Rhiannon had loved his lessons as a child, and she’d stuck by him as a woman, whereas the other locals shunned him as an eccentric. She was the closest thing he had to a friend; blood almost; his daughter even.

  Bollocks! He thrashed the strings. He should have been able to protect her, should have saved her family. If he’d used the statue sooner… Even now he could feel its warmth pulsing in his pocket.

  “Don’t look so worried, my friend,” Limus said, limping towards him. “No point troubling yourself with past…” There was a pause as Limus sought the right words and then gave up.

  “Beautiful evening for music.” He gestured towards the mandola.

  Elias smiled and began to pluck a melancholy ballad whilst Limus settled himself on a bench a few yards from the cart. The old priest closed his eyes and swayed gently to the music.

  As he finished the song, Elias swung his legs over the edge of the cart, leaving the mandola on the seat. His hand instinctively felt for the statue.

  “There is no evil in what you carry.” Limus sounded half asleep.

  “What?”

  “I sometimes sense these things. Forgive me. Since my accident I can discern the thoughts of… What were you saying?” Limus rubbed at the shiny yellowish patch on his forehead, the scar-tissue from his accident. “You are leaving us, brother…?”

  Elias sat beside him, looked off into the distance, not at anything in particular; just replaying scenes—Yeffrik, Jessy, a pang of guilt about little Sammy. Wishing he’d done more. Tearing up over Rhiannon. “Elias, Pater. The Bard of Broken Bridge.”

  “That’s right. I won’t remember, though.”

  “Yes,” Elias said. “I’m leaving. Off some place new, never time to let the dust settle.” Except he’d traveled nowhere for decades, and the thought of giving up his shack set his heart racing in a way that couldn’t be good. Couldn’t go back, though. Not just the risk, either. He’d never be able to live with himself, with all the reminders.

  “You’ll not stay with the girl?”

  Elias thought for a moment before shaking his head. “No, Pater; she’ll be safe or she won’t. Nothing I do will alter that.”

  “And that thing you carry?”

  Elias took out the black statue and showed it to Limus. Its coils rippled with amber radiance and Elias thought he could feel it breathing.

  “It’s a … Oh!” Limus shook his head in frustration.

  “Snake?”

  “Yes, that’s right. One of the children of Nous. There were three you know.”

  Elias smiled with good humor. “Who says they’re from Nous?”

  Limus appeared not to hear him. “Will you say goodbye to the others?”

  “I’m no good with adieus, and besides, the perimeter guards probably won’t let me out. I could be back before you can say ‘neo-capitalist-monomaniac-tech-whore.’ “

  Elias vaulted into his cart and snatched up Hector’s reins, squinting at something scuttling over the lip of the tray.

  “What is it, brother?” Limus asked.

  “Nothing. Just an insect.” Or a spider, he mused; and a large one at that.

  Elias drove out onto the Domus Tyalae and turned into Ishgar Terrace. A golden-haired child stood in the road, holding aloft a sliver of glowing amber.

  “Sammy?”

  The child turned and ran. Elias lashed Hector in pursuit. The boy headed left into Haldegon Road, the cart rattling after, tipping onto two wheels as it took the corner too quickly. Elias swung his weight to one side and the cart crashed back level, bouncing along the cobbles. It seemed, no matter how fast Elias went, the child maintained the same lead. He scampered right into a winding road, forcing Elias to swerve around a heavily laden death-cart. Slowing Hector to take the bends, Elias reached an intersection with a branching sign-post. The child waited on the right, midway between Draco Road and Wharf Way.

  Suddenly, he dashed inside a boarded-up house on the other side of the street. Elias pulled up outside and leapt from the driving seat without straightening the cart in the road.

  The door to the building was open, the entrance hall beyond unnaturally dark and clogged with thick cobwebs. His heart was pounding, his mind racing with reasons not to enter. Had the child been holding a piece of the Statue of Eingana? One of the fangs? Why show him? Was it a trap? Course it was. Must’ve been. But what if there was a chance…? He thought about Sammy fleeing from the house after the killing of his parents; cringed with shame at his failure to go back. Gripping the statue tightly in his pocket, Elias stepped inside.

  THE AID OF THE FALLEN

  The waters of the Soulsong rippled red in the setting sun as Shader spotted the tents he’d passed on the way to the abbey. Bare-chested soldiers were digging atop a low mound, whilst others bathed at the river’s edge. Fiddling with the knots on his prayer-cord, Shader crossed the bridge towards them.

  “Nousian!” bellowed a sentry on the other side.

  The soldiers washing their wounds scrambled for weapons, blood still swirling on the surface of the river. The others ceased their d
igging for the dead, strewn hacked and bloody around the camp, and glared at Shader with hard eyes. He started to fasten the buttons on his coat, then realized it was a bit late for that. They’d already seen the Monas on his surcoat. No point denying what he was. The shame that he’d even considered it was already nagging at the back of his mind. “What happened here?”

  The sentry stepped back drawing his sword.

  “Put it away.” Shader held up a hand. “I’m not your enemy.”

  Half a dozen soldiers ran up to the bridge with weapons ready, a single archer notching an arrow and taking aim.

  “Don’t I know you?” said a burly man with a wiry ginger beard. “You spoke with Cap’n Janks when the Fallen passed.”

  “Is he here?”

  “Buried, along with half our troop.”

  “Mawgs?” Even as he said it, Shader knew it hadn’t been mawgs. The bodies were too intact, still recognizable as human.

  “Cavalry,” said the sentry he’d first approached, a scrawny youth who’d taken a gash across his cheek, just beneath the eye.

  “Evil shogging bunch,” Ginger-beard said. “Nousians by the look of ‘em. Leader wore a white cloak with the same symbol you’ve got on your surcoat; fought like a demon with two swords.”

  The chill of recognition touched Shader.

  “Plowed right through us as we broke our fast,” the sentry said. “Headed straight for Sarum. With any luck the plague will get ‘em.

  “Why would they…?” It was obvious these men wouldn’t know. They looked as bewildered as he felt. Shader tilted his hat back and met Ginger-beard’s eyes. He tried to connect, reassure him, but it wasn’t something he was good at. Ginger-beard must have seen that look others had told Shader about. There was a shift in his demeanor, a widening of the pupils. He didn’t want any more trouble. Might just as well have put his hands up and backed away. “I’ve business there, too. Will you let me pass?”