The Lady of the Snowmist (War of the Gods on Earth Book 3)

by Andrew J Offutt

  By now many men on that hillside were turning fearfully, to see and dodge rather than be struck down from behind by feather-rustling shafts from their own ship. They did not know about their four archers who now lay with Jilain’s arrows in them, but the fall of six men on the slope to whizzing death from behind was grievously demoralizing. Now an attacker shouted and pointed, and another saw her, and another.

  Strave saw an advantage, and shouted immediately.

  “Onto the rocks and put two volleys into those archers down there! If ten don’t fall I’ll bite your ugly noses!”

  Up pounced his archers, while below, three and then four discovered that they could not drive their shafts through the silver-shining armor of the apparent god on their own ship. Now warriors wheeled to charge back. They swarmed at their own ship against the single enemy that had seized it to become more deadly than rolling, flying stones. Their yelling whelmed the keening of seventeen arrows from above. Those shafts fell among their own bowmen, who perforce lost interest in Jilain.

  She turned her attention to her nearer and more personal menace. Her unseen sniping was at an end. Others resumed forging up the slope while Jilain’s arrows downed one of those running at her, then two, four …

  Somehow three attackers gained the very brow of the hill and aided each other in clutching the massy grey-and-umber stone there. Gane of Kirrensark-wark clambered atop it to hack down at them. Delath, thinking he had lost his senses, dragged Gane back. Spluttering in anger, Gane told the other man what he was about. He heard the white-haired man’s yells, then, and loaned his shoulder to Delath’s chosen chore. The stone budged. Dark hands slapped onto it as it teetered. An attacker screamed as it started to move, and then another, and for a moment Gane looked up into blazing eyes dark as oak bark. Then boulder and Hawkers were gone, in a rumbling rolling horror that jellied those men in their armor and smashed down one, then two of their comrades.

  During those same swift seemingly eternal moments an iron hawk took off Gane’s helmet and some hair and scalp with it. Delath’s ax struck the hawk so hard that the bird careened to strike sparks off one of the permanent boulders. As it started again upward a man came hurtling through the air, a dark streak in black chain-armor. Just as black, his sword smashed the god-hawk so that it was hurled many feet down the hill — to vanish with a loud cracking sound and a burst of white and yellow fire. A nearby attacker screamed, dropping his weapon to clap hands to his eyes. He fell and went rolling and sliding down the slope.

  Jarik, having destroyed the second of three demonbirds, was carried by his own momentum to fall against

  Delath. The older man helped him up, and for a moment their eyes met.

  “Nicely done, Jarik!”

  “Let the past be dead as that fell bird, Delath.”

  “I am ever your brother, warrior.”

  Meanwhile the third hawk, as if aware of the deadly menace both to its kind and to the men it aided, was streaking for the ship on which Jilain stood.

  “Dogs eat its young!” Gane snarled, unmindful of the blood reddening his hair and ear and shoulder. “That poxy bird ruined my helmet!”

  And Jilain Kerosyris, in the armor of the Lady of the Snowmist, drew a black sword of the Iron Lords and hewed in half a god-bird on behalf of Kirrensark-wark.

  It was then the foremost of the returning dark men reached the ship on which the child Snowmist had set her. Dropping to one knee, Jilain struck that man so that his head fell sideways and hung by a shred of skin and muscle while his body wilted. Others rushed to take her, a woman in the armor of one god who wielded the sword of another.

  The defenders above were afforded a superb view of the spectacle of that invincible mortal goddess at her work of defending and attacking. None failed to note her surpassing grace and gymnastic ability that enhanced her warrior’s skills. Dancing, leaping, lashing, squatting to lunge and slash, pouncing a yard away to chop the fingers that sought to drag a man onto her keep. Her silver armor flashed white fire back at the sun. Her ebony sword hewed amid sundered armor and flying gore. Men fell back spurting blood. She remained untouched, and six men had fallen. More were ordered in to deal with her, and some high above heard the strangeness of an accent different from both theirs and Jilain’s.

  Jarik saw the monster coming, then, winging in over the sea.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Heroes, notwithstanding the high ideas which, by means of flatterers, they may entertain of themselves, or the world may conceive of them, have certainly more of mortal than divine about them.

  — Henry Fielding

  The metal hawks of the Iron Lords were large; they were to normal hawks as were they to chickadees. What came flapping now over the sea was to the god-hawks as they to termites or wood-grubs. It flew, and it was half the size of a ship, with wings like sails. They flapped.

  Of fulvous yellow it was, Jarik saw, and so did other men who stopped what they did, to stare. It came on the wings of a gigantic vulture, the father and grandfather of vultures. Not vulture-black were those wings, though; they were dusty yellow. Its hindquarters and trailing legs were those of a tawny cat the size of a horse. It came over the sea, seemingly from the sea. Flapping in and in toward Kirrensark-wark, and with each sweep of those wings it soared twenty yards while the water stirred below it. Awed attackers and defenders alike saw the sinisterly open mouth below the hooked beak. Yet the creature made no sound.

  It bore a passenger.

  On its back, astride, sat a figure all of black. Its shape was that of a man and it gleamed blue in the sunlight.

  Jarik saw and said nothing. He twisted from Delath, pounced over and between stones, and went pell-melling down the incline to the sea. He ran as if he had been heavily pushed. He had not. He had seen an Iron Lord, riding to battle on the back of an impossible bird-cat; a gryphon. Everyone said such creatures existed; playthings of the gods. Few would swear to having seen one. Many saw one now. And the god on its back.

  Men besieged a blue-painted ship with furled sails of green and yellow and a great hawk’s head at its prow, in blue. On its deck a woman defended herself from many, masked below winged helm and above impenetrable armor of silvery mesh. At that ship swooped the enormous gryphon, all in silence.

  Jarik rushed down the slope in a way that kept him erect only by momentum and the blurry churning of his legs. A man in his way started to straighten up against him, and was overtaken by timidity or wisdom. Dodging to avoid the unstoppable, he fell and roll-slid down and down. One of his comrades failed to get out of the way in time and was bowled over. They fell rolling, tangled and cursing.

  Racing pell-mell, Jarik passed them both. He was bellowing two words all the while.

  “Jilain! Above! Jilain! Abowve!”

  She was busy, and her attackers were making plenty of noise to swallow the sound of his voice. Jilain became aware only when a great broad shadow fell over the man whose pointy helm and forehead she was hewing, and over her arm and sword. She danced back from the ship’s side, then, with the gryphon rushing down at her. Now she felt the down-draft from mighty wings.

  Still the shadow was on her, and she sprang aside. She thumped hard against the ship’s rail, and in an instant she went toppling over the side onto the sand. Four or five dark men in spear-top helmets, frozen to stare at the descending monster, roused themselves to pounce on their worst enemy.

  She still was. The first saw his lean sword shatter into two pieces against her winged helmet. Then a mailed foot kicked him in the approximate center of his body and he fell puking. The second man ran directly onto the point of her black blade. It bit him deep. The fifth was chopped from behind from right shoulder to left nipple, and him in a coat of scale armor. Jarik was there, amid the scent of brine.

  The gryphon plunged low and the Iron Lord dropped onto the deck of the ship Jilain had quitted. Despite its fearsome aspect, the flying eagle-cat made no effort to attack. It swept gustily aloft. Desperately, to distract this god of the
Forces of Destruction from Jilain, Jarik shouted.

  “Annihilation lies dead, great lord. Are you come to be next?”

  The god was not to be distracted. The Iron Lord ignored the shout. His goal was her he had to assume was the Lady of the Snowmist, in her silvery armor and his brother-god’s sword in her hand. Nor could he be bothered with consideration for his human allies that were in the way. The black god-sword pointed, not at Jarik — whose violent attempt at a leap was foiled by a black-bearded corpse. He fell with a grunt.

  Flame from the Iron Lord’s extended blade turned Jilain’s third and fourth attackers into little suns and danced over them in coruscating yellow-white brilliance. Yet on her, over her and all around her that awful fire flared blue, as if starved for air. She did not become flame, but she did lose her grip on her own god-sword.

  “Call it to you!” Jarik bellowed, stumbling upright. “Call your sword to you, Jilain! Call it to you!”

  If she heard, she could not respond. Jilain was a jerkily dancing puppet to the weak blue flame from the Iron Lord’s weapon. Beyond rational thought with his fear for her, Jarik hurled his own sword. He did not know that he bellowed aloud for its return.

  The Black Sword struck in a miraculous failure. It did not pierce the god-armor, or even strike fully point-first. Yet it banged loudly off the god’s arm with enough force to make him lose his grip on his own weapon. Its flame sputtered out as it dropped from his gauntleted hand.

  The Black Sword heeled over without turning, and glided hilt-first back to Jarik. Now he was at the base of the attacker ship’s prow. So were more of the foreigners, their dark eyes blazing with menace. Jilain, having got to her feet, bounded past Jarik to slash at those Hawkers who sought to hew at him from behind. The dropped god-sword lifted from the sand, to return to its owner. And Jarik, leaping, clutching at the edge of the ship’s planking with his shield-hand, struck at the Iron Lord’s advanced right leg.

  Jarik’s shield banged loudly into the ship and he did not fall backward but was catapulted.

  The Black Sword had sliced through god-armor, and skin and muscle and bone, to flash free on the other side in a spattering splash of red. Let anyone doubt now that gods bled, or that their blood was as red as any human’s!

  Not used to fighting, these Iron Lords, he thought, even as Jarik slammed to the sand with a teeth-clashing impact that rattled his armor with the sound of dry old haricot pods. It was not, however, his mailcoat or his grunting groan that he heard. What he heard was a cry of pain and horror that echoed metallically within the helm of god-metal the color of jet.

  The Iron Lord toppled, and fell off the ship of his human allies. The footless stump of his left leg squirted blood like a mountain spring gone red. His gauntleted hand came down on the yellow-and-nacarat shield of a slain attacker with the sound of an ax against a shed door. The oval shield cracked from end to end.

  The Iron Lord’s sword fell to the sparkling sand, over a pace from its owner. Jarik, thrusting himself again to his feet, heard a loud sound from several throats and recognized a cry of consternation. A man froze in the act of attacking him, to stare at the fallen god who had come to the aid of him and his fellows. The foreigner stared at a fallen, writhing god; at spurting blood that darkened the sand which swallowed it. Equally horrified into immobility, two of his compatriots fell to the same stroke of Jilain’s sword.

  Jarik started to the Iron Lord he had crippled, and saw the sand around him darkened by an enormous shadow. He heard Jilain’s scream.

  “Jarik!”

  Covered by that shadow as by a patch of night, Jarik yanked his sword to point above his head. At the same time, he hurled himself aside.

  His sword struck nothing. He lost his balance in that desperate lunge to escape. He fell to tumble near the edge of the lapping sea. Twisting over, disoriented, he saw the talons of the gryphon, each bigger than the tusk of an out-sized wild boar, close on the Iron Lord. Then the great wings beat, one buffeting Jilain as if she had been a doll. That same wind buffeted Jarik and he squinted in the dust raised from the sand. While a groan resounded in the helmet of the Iron Lord, the gigantic creature rose into the air to carry him far from swords. He might bleed to death, but he would be safe from Jarik’s and Jilain’s armor-slicing blades.

  Jarik hated that thought. He could not suffer his enemy to escape so. He risked wrenching his back in twistflopping over. In the doing of that, his blade clanged on the Iron Lord’s dropped sword. Letting go his hilt, Jarik grasped the other sword just below its guard. At the same time he was lurching to his feet.

  The gryphon sprang aloft. The god dangled beneath, streaming blood. Already the eagle-cat was swinging out over the sea.

  “Return to your owner!” Jarik yelled, and hurled the god’s sword the best way he could, point first as though it had been a short spear.

  The sword did not obey, but it did drive true. Even I can’t miss every time, Jarik mused, watching the sword drive twenty feet. Its hilt was starting to sink with its own weight, when it plunged into the belly of the gryphon.

  I have used you, sword, Jarik thought. Return to me!

  He yelled it aloud, but the sword did not respond. It was not his. It remained lodged, sunk well in to liberate blood, real blood. The huge bird-thing canted, flapped madly, flew farther with great flaps of its wings, canted again. It slid visibly sidewise and down several feet, with blood running off the sword imbedded in its underside. Big eagle-ragged pinions stroked hard, pushing it up, up, thirty and then forty feet above the sea. Jarik could only stand and stare, not knowing that he was holding his breath while he raged and silently pleaded with the universe.

  The gryphon was sixty or so feet up and twice that distance out to sea, still huge. Then it shuddered, lurched, and again began sliding sidewise.

  In a spasm, its talons opened.

  Many eyes watched the dropping of a god. He fell like a stone, splashed like a boulder, sank like … iron.

  Diving for him in apparent instinct — or on mental command? — the wounded gryphon lost control and also slammed into the water. Its wings sprang wide as impact drove the sword deeper up into it, almost to the hilt.

  “Jarik!”

  Jilain’s voice, and Jarik whirled. He found a man rushing at him behind a long shield of green painted with the head of a blue bird of prey. An ax swung over his head in a silvery rush.

  Jarik did not attempt to put his buckler in the way of that chopping stroke. He stood as if frozen — an instant longer, until the ax and its wielder’s arms were committed in a downward rush at him. Only then did Jarik drive himself leftward with all the strength of his legs and lurching body. Simultaneously he jerked his sword viciously across between him and his attacker.

  The ax flashed down, encountering only air. Its wielder was pulled past by its momentum. Jarik’s sword, having swung all the way left, seemed to recoil so that it blurred in a rushing backswing. That horizontal stroke cut the dark man nearly in two, just above the hip.

  He glanced back at the sun-sparkling sea. There was no sign of the Iron Lord. Wings widespread to keep it afloat, the god’s steed struggled feebly. The water was darkening around it. The gryphon was dying, as its master had to be dead.

  Learn fear and grow lonely, O you last Lord of Iron in your keep without kith, Jarik thought, and wondered: was it Dread or Destruction who yet lived?

  Then he turned back to look at the hillside and along the strand. A general lull had accompanied the falling of the Iron Lord, and his apparent rescue, and now his obvious slaying. The long incline was strewn with corpses and writhing men wounded by arrows or stones. It was alive, too, with many upright men in helmets surmounted by sharp vertical leaves of iron like spearheads. The beach was an ugly jumble of tumbled stones and boulders and a few fallen men. Hundreds of eyes stared past the black-armored man at water’s edge. They stared at the impossible flying thing that floated now, a far from permanent monument to a fallen god.

  Then a manic fig
ure pounced atop one of the big base-stones atop the hill. He was mailed in leather jerkin and amber-decorated helm. He raised his sword on high and slashed it through the air so that it caught the sunlight like fire.

  “Their god is dead! Half of them are dead and they’ve never gained even the hilltop!” Delath yelled. “Into the seeeeea with them!”

  And he plunged off the boulder and six mad plunging downhill strides later clove a man’s arm from his body so that the foreigner’s ax flew to down one of his own comrades.

  Another man, bellowing, followed Delath; it was Stirl Elk-runner and behind him a helmetless man Jarik did not know, and there came Kirrensark too. That half-running half-sliding maniac was a youth called Coon, and his shield smashed away an enemy in his path. And here came more, and more still, of the men of Kirrensark-wark.

  Oceanside, by gods’ blood, Jarik thought. Oceanside! Tomash-ten is reborn here this day, or I swear the Black Sword will bite Kirrensark!

  In seconds, attackers became pursued. One by one and then in a jumbled rushing mass they broke and fled the paler men rushing downhill at them.

  Jarik realized that he and Jilain were very much in the wrong place.

  “Jilish! They’ll flow over us like a flooding stream! Onto the ship again!”

  And there they joined. And no attackers could board against the hissing darkly flashing pair of jet-hued swords of the god-metal.

  A great and hardly credible victory was won that day. That day four hundred invaders and a god came on behalf of the Forces of Destruction to destroy Kirrensark-wark and then to attack Snowmist Herself, and all fell to a hundred defenders. All. Surely a hundred of the strange walnut-skinned, big-nosed foreigners with the dark eyes were downed by the woman in silver god-armor and the man in black mail, for everything yielded to their swords. The tides carried red-dyed water for miles. The assailants had never so much as reached the top of the bluff on which the wark rose. Attack became battle, and battle became pursuit and hacking massacre on the beach. And when it was done and the odor of blood thick on the air, the victors collapsed panting, exhausted with the slaying. They had even won two good ships.