Mask of Swords

by Jonathan Moeller

“Like ants,” said Romaria, “but more vicious.”

  “Be on your guard,” said Mazael as the armsmen returned to their saddles. Romaria climbed back atop her horse, drawing the short bow she used while on horseback.

  “Do you think the valgasts know that we’re here?” said Adalar, holding a steel war hammer in his right hand.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Mazael, and tapped his reins. His horse started forward, the others following suit, and they came to the village square. The domed stone church, built in the style of Old Dracaryl, rose on the northern end, its doors shut. A tavern stood on the eastern end of the square, and houses rose to the south and the north. To the west Mazael saw the Crowhands’ manor house standing upon its hill. It, too, appeared abandoned. Not even smoke rose from its chimneys.

  “Quiet place,” said Wesson. “I think…”

  Mazael never found out what he thought.

  As one the doors and windows of every house in the square burst open, and a tide of small, greenish-yellow figures surged forth. The valgasts wore the same peculiar bone armor that Mazael had seen in Gray Pillar, and carried bone blades and blowguns. They also carried rope nets between them.

  The valgasts had come to take captives.

  “To arms!” shouted Mazael, snatching the war horn from his saddle and lifting it to his lips. He blew a long blast, the note ringing over the village. The valgasts loosed their rasping, high-pitched war cries and surged forward in a greenish-yellow tide of claws and fangs and enormous black eyes.

  Dozens of valgasts raised their blowguns, and Mazael kicked his horse to a charge.

  ###

  His shoulders ached from wearing his armor all day, but Adalar was glad, very glad, that he had worn it. His horse thundered towards the valgasts as he lifted the hammer in his right fist. He had never seen creatures like the valgasts, and they were not as threatening as the Malrags or as otherworldly as the runedead. Yet their teeth and claws looked long and sharp, and Adalar was reasonably sure that the darts that flew from their blowguns were poisoned.

  And there were so damned many of the creatures.

  A volley of darts flew towards him, and Adalar caught a half-dozen on his shield, more clanging off his armor. His horse crashed into the creatures, crushing two of them beneath its steel-shod hooves, and Adalar swung his hammer. The blow collapsed a valgast’s skull, sending the creature sprawling, and Adalar turned his horse around for another pass.

  Yet his horse stumbled, and Adalar looked down to see three darts jutting from the beast’s neck. Surely his horse had not been drugged? His mount was a thousand pounds of muscle and bone, and it would take an exceedingly potent drug for three darts to put the horse to sleep.

  The horse stumbled again, and Adalar realized the beast was going to collapse.

  He jumped from the saddle just as his horse fell with a wheezing groan. Adalar hit the ground hard, his armor clanging, and rolled to his feet. He had lost his hammer in the fall, but his greatsword rode upon his back, and he yanked the weapon from its sheath.

  A tide of valgasts surged at him.

  ###

  Mazael vaulted from his saddle, shield in his left hand and Talon in his right. The trained war horse would have given him a solid advantage against the spindly valgasts. Yet the saddle also put him too high to land effective blows with Talon, and the horse made for a big target. Mazael’s fears proved well-founded when the horse collapsed a moment later, a half-dozen valgast darts dotting its neck. He saw Romaria leap from her saddle, her Elderborn bow coming up as she sent shaft after shaft blurring into the mass of valgasts. The valgasts pouring from the inn converged on her.

  Mazael met them first.

  A volley of darts flew towards him, and he caught them on his shield. In the same motion he swung his left arm with all his strength, the shield smashing into a valgast’s head with enough force to crush bone. Talon was a blur of darkness and golden flame in his right hand, and Mazael struck down one, two, three valgasts in quick order, leaving them to leak their peculiar greenish-black blood into the earth. A valgast howled in fury and jumped upon Mazael’s back, but an arrow shot past his head to plunge into the creature’s neck.

  More valgasts came at him, and Mazael attacked with something almost like glee. The Demonsouled rage that always simmered beneath his thoughts burned through his mind, and it made the nimble valgasts seem terribly slow. From time to time one of their darts nicked him, but the rage overwhelmed the numbness at once, the cuts disappearing quickly. Mazael killed and killed, and all the while Romaria shot arrow after arrow with the uncanny accuracy of her skill and Elderborn senses. The valgasts’ charge faltered, and Mazael saw fear flashing across their alien faces.

  Then the ground shook, and a wave of Mazael’s horsemen thundered into the square.

  ###

  Adalar whipped his greatsword around, taking the head of another valgast. The blade was as long as the creatures were tall, and its length let him keep them at bay while his armor turned their darts. Yet there were so damned many of the things, and they were starting to encircle him. If three darts had been enough to stun his horse, it would only take one to bring him down. Yet another valgast lunged at him, and Adalar swept his greatsword up, parrying the stab of the bone blade, and then brought his sword back down. The blow bisected the valgast’s skull, and the creature collapsed. Two more darted into the gap, and Adalar stepped back, sweeping his sword before him to hold them back. There were too many of them, and they were simply going to overwhelm him and drag him down, like a pack of wolves pulling down an elk. He might kill two or three or even half a dozen, but the rest would drive their blades through the gaps in his armor.

  Adalar braced himself, preparing for a final charge.

  The ground shuddered beneath his boots in the familiar rhythm of charging cavalry. Three of Adalar’s armsmen thundered past him, clad in chain mail and green Greatheart tabards, their maces and hammers flashing. The valgasts were short enough that it was hard to strike them from horseback, but the horses themselves made up for it by smashing their way through the creatures. One of Adalar’s armsmen fell from the saddle, a valgast dart jutting from his elbow, and Adalar ran to the fallen man’s side, killing two valgasts that stooped over him. More horsemen poured into the square, followed by Arnulf’s spearthains and swordthains. The valgast attack began to collapse, the creatures fleeing back to the houses.

  They were winning. Mazael had called the valgasts scavengers, and the description seemed accurate. The creatures were bold enough when attacking weaker foes, but fled in the face of determined opposition. Adalar struck and dodged, his mind working through the implications. How had the valgasts gotten into Castyard? Had they climbed the wall? Or had they tunneled up from beneath the village? Would they flee back to the hills, or would they hide within Castyard? If the creatures decided to conceal themselves, it might take days to root them out…

  A flash of light atop the church caught Adalar’s attention.

  A figure in a ragged black robe stood at the edge of the church’s dome, face concealed beneath a voluminous cowl. The figure’s hands were visible, encased in clawed gauntlets of red armor, hands that were starting to glow.

  The figure was casting a spell.

  Adalar looked around for Timothy, but saw no sign of the wizard. Had he remained with the camp?

  The hooded shape atop the church gestured, and there was another flash of light. A roaring sound filled Adalar’s ears, and a half a dozen Tervingi thains went tumbling through the air, flung by the blast of magic.

  ###

  Mazael cut down one of the fleeing valgasts, forcing his way closer to the church.

  His first thought was that another valgast wizard had appeared. Yet the black-robed figure was too tall and too wide to be a valgast, and unlike the wizard he had fought in Gray Pillar, this wizard attacked with blasts of invisible force rather than raging gouts of flame and summoned spirit creatures. That itself meant nothing – a wizard could k
now many different spells. Yet a wizard’s power could also turn the course of the battle, and if Mazael did not stop this wizard the black-robed shape might well tear his men apart.

  Romaria raised her bow and sent three shafts at the robed figure. The arrows slammed into the robed shape’s chest, the black clothing rippling, but the wizard did not even so much as flinch. Likely a magical ward had turned aside the arrows.

  If Mazael could get close enough, he suspected the wards would prove less effective against Talon’s enchanted blade.

  The robed shape raised its hands, revealing the peculiar clawed gauntlets of red armor, and began another spell. Before it finished a green burst of light flashed around the robed shape, and it staggered, more rocked by the light than by Romaria’s arrows. Timothy stepped forward, black coat flying around him, his right hand raised and holding the crystal he had used to block Agaric’s sleeping spell. Timothy began another spell, and Mazael expected the robed wizard to do the same.

  Instead the figure whirled, the movement peculiarly fluid, and then sprang from the roof of the church like a missile fired from a catapult. The figure soared overhead, robes flapping around it, and for a brief instant Mazael thought that it had taken flight, whether with wings or a potent spell.

  Then he realized it had simply jumped.

  “Move!” he shouted to Timothy. “Move!”

  The wizard’s eyes widened, and he hastened out of the way.

  An instant later the robed figure landed where Timothy had been standing, and Mazael was ready. He swept Talon before him in a powerful swing, and the robed figure twisted to the side with inhuman grace. Talon ripped across its chest, and Mazael felt the blade scrape against armor. The sword caught against the black robe, and as Mazael completed his swing the hooded shape stepped back, ripping the robe in half between them.

  The creature beneath the black cloth was most certainly not human.

  It looked female, her body encased in overlapping plates of form-fitting, blood-colored chitin. Mazael realized that that her armored gauntlets were not metal at all but part of her armor, their jagged spikes her natural claws. Her face was eerily, inhumanly beautiful, and eight white-glowing eyes shone upon her face. Even as she stepped back, four more legs uncurled from the sides of her torso. Those legs were long, far longer than she was tall, knobbed and armored and tipped with heavy black claws. The creature looked like some a cross between a woman and a giant spider.

  Cries of dismay went up from the Tervingi, and some of them reeled back from the sight of the creature.

  “Soliphage!” said Romaria.

  So that was what they looked like.

  Romaria sent another arrow at it, but the shaft shattered against the soliphage’s armored body as if it had struck a stone wall. The creature wheeled towards her in silence, its extra legs striking the ground and driving it forward with terrific speed. A Tervingi spearthain yelled and drove his weapon at the soliphage, but the spear’s point struck the dark red chitin and rebounded without leaving a scratch. The blow rocked the soliphage for a moment, and Mazael surged forward, slashing with Talon. This time the curved sword ripped across the soliphage’s flank, the golden sigils upon the blade shining brighter, and the sword sheared through the armored hide, black slime bubbling from the wound. The soliphage reared back upon its spider legs with a scream of pain, and lashed at Mazael with one of its long legs. He caught the blow upon his shield, the strength of the impact sending a jolt of pain up his entire arm, and brought Talon around in an answering strike. The curved sword sheared through the leg’s joint, and its clawed tip fell to the ground.

  Again the soliphage screamed in pain, and Mazael darted forward before the creature could recover. Talon’s next blow landed upon the soliphage’s neck. The soliphage raked at him with clawed hands, but his golden armor turned aside the blows, and his next strike took off the soliphage’s head. The creature’s legs went into a mad dance, lashing at the air, and its body collapsed to the ground.

  Mazael stepped back with a deep breath, black slime dripping from his sword. The valgasts had already been wavering, and the fall of the soliphage seemed to have broken their morale entirely. The creatures fled back into the church and the inn, crawling over each other to get through the doors and the windows. Mazael turned his head as Adalar approached, his blade and armor splashed with the greenish-black blood of the valgasts.

  “That is madness,” said Adalar. “Why flee into to the church and the inn? They’ll be trapped. We could burn the building down around them.”

  “No, they won’t be trapped,” said Mazael. “They’re retreating. And I think I know where we’ll find the villagers.”

  ###

  The church had a broad stone crypt, ancient and dusty, and the inn had a spacious cellar used to store beer and other supplies.

  Both were filled with unconscious villagers.

  “They came in the night,” said Sir Edmund Crowhand. The middle-aged knight was paunchy and red-faced, albeit with a chest like a barrel and the shoulders of a blacksmith. “We’d just gotten the warning about the valgast raids, so I had ordered the watch and my armsmen to greater vigilance.” He shook his head, his gray beard rustling. “I didn’t expect them to come up through the ground.”

  They stood in the cellar of the inn. The walls were lined with brick and the floor covered with flagstones. Arnulf’s thains and Mazael’s and Adalar’s armsmen were busy at work, carrying villagers that were still unconscious to the square.

  “I cannot blame you for that,” said Mazael.

  A huge hole gaped in the corner of the cellar, revealing a tunnel descending into the darkness. Mazael’s men had found a similar tunnel in the crypt below the church. Likely the valgasts had spent days digging their tunnels, and then had burst into the surface all at once, overwhelming the sleeping villagers before they could organize a coherent defense.

  “They were everywhere at once,” said Edmund. “One scratch from their weapons put strong men to sleep. I tried to rally my men, but I took one of their damned darts to my neck…and then I woke up here. If you had not come along when you had, my lord, we would all have been killed.”

  “I suspect,” said Mazael, looking at the tunnel, “that they weren’t going to kill you. They wanted to take you back with them.”

  Though for what purpose, he had no idea.

  There was a scraping noise in the tunnel, and Romaria climbed up, her face and armor layered with dust. Edmund gave her a wary glance. Many of the lords and knights of the Grim Marches did not know what to make of Romaria. Though to be fair, Mazael had not known what to make of her when they had first met.

  “The tunnel goes down about sixty feet,” said Romaria, wiping the dust off her face. “There’s a cavern down there. Big one. I don’t know how far it goes, but it reeks of valgasts. I suspect it leads deeper into the underworld proper, even to one of the valgasts’ cities.”

  “Did they wish to take us as captives, then?” said Edmund. “As slaves.” He swallowed. “Or food?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mazael. “But I intend to find out.”

  ###

  They left the next morning, riding north along the boundary between the hill country and the plains. Sir Edmund’s villagers had been busy filling up the valgasts’ tunnels. The people of Castyard had had a close escape, and Mazael doubted they would be taken unawares again.

  Edmund had recalled that Agaric and his men had passed through Castyard on their way to Cravenlock Town two weeks past. Romaria had looked at each of the villagers and found no trace of any of the mind-controlling spiders. The only spider they had seen was the soliphage.

  Were Agaric’s spiders related to the soliphages?

  Mazael didn’t know, but he suspected the answers awaited at Banner Hill.

  But first they would stop at Greatheart Keep and lay Sir Nathan to rest at last.

  Chapter 8: Hrould

  Sigaldra awoke as someone shook her shoulders.

  For a con
fused moment she could not remember where she was. Were the Malrags attacking? If the Malrags were attacking, Ragnachar and his men would not lift a finger to help them. Likely he would even pull back, in hopes that the Malrags would kill the Jutai and the Tervingi could then claim their supplies. She would have to rally her people, send word to Athanaric and the Guardian to send aid…

  Wait. Greatheart Keep, she was in Greatheart Keep. The Malrags and the runedead had been defeated, but the danger to the Jutai had not passed. Earnachar was coming. He had finally discarded his stupid little games, and decided to assail the village.

  Then Sigaldra’s tired mind snapped back into focus, and she heard Liane speaking.

  “He’s coming,” said Liane, shaking her shoulders, “he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming.”

  “For the ancestors’ sake,” said Sigaldra, sitting up and taking Liane’s hands off her shoulders. For a moment irritation burned through her. Could she not even sleep the night in peace? Yet Liane was the only family she had left.

  “He’s coming,” said Liane, her voice a whisper.

  “Who?” said Sigaldra, “who is coming?”

  “He is coming,” said Liane.

  “That really doesn’t answer the question,” said Sigaldra.

  The door to the small bedroom burst open, and old Ulfarna appeared, already dressed in her widow’s blacks, an axe in her hands.

  “Holdmistress,” said Ulfarna. “Are there foes? I heard shouting.”

  “No,” said Sigaldra, pushing the hair away from her face. “The ancestors are gracing Liane with another vision.”

  “He’s coming,” said Liane again.

  “I see,” said Ulfarna. “Well, I shall prepare breakfast. I imagine talking to the ancestors is hungry work.”

  “Wait,” said Sigaldra. Liane’s visions were often incomprehensible, but they were always accurate. “Send word to Talchar. Perhaps the ancestors are warning us of foes.” Had Earnachar finally decided to risk the wrath of Mazael Cravenlock and attack? Even if he had not, there were any number of other foes, human and otherwise, that would attack villages.