Songs of the Dark

by Anthony Ryan

  The king’s laughter faded slowly and he shrugged before replying, ‘I am . . . very patient. And this has all been highly diverting.’

  My General killed him then, a single thrust to the heart, a far greater mercy than he deserved.

  * * *

  Of the Kethian population, only some three thousand survived the siege and all seem to have been rendered mad by the experience. In accordance with custom, the menfolk were executed and the women and children sold into slavery, although it seems unlikely a maddened slave would fetch more than the most meagre price. Karvalev’s fate is not recorded, though some have sought to ascribe the later writings of an Atethian scholar to him as evidence that he survived the city’s fall. These works do display a notable stylistic similarity to Karvalev, but their subject matter—a treatise on the most effective methods of growing cabbages, for example—seems far too mundane to have occupied such a mind.

  Entril’s letters cease at the conclusion of the Kethian campaign, but he is known to have stayed at Vartek’s side for much of his subsequent career. They fought together in over twenty separate campaigns as Volaria consolidated its gains and the Forging Age drew to a close. Entril achieved Council-man status shortly before his death, having founded a dynasty which continues to occupy a council seat to this day.

  Vartek refused a seat on the council, offered in spite of the fact that he still owned but one slave, and retired to a coastal villa near Varral. He is known to have fathered several children, all being declared free at time of birth by special decree of the council. He died at the age of sixty-nine, his will ordering the mother of his children be freed upon his death and all his property be rendered to her care. His four sons all entered the army but none ever ascended to the same heights of renown, for what son could ever hope to escape such a shadow? The Vartek dynasty was not fated to last, the name disappearing from the records during the Great Cleansing, presumably the result of an unfortunate religious adherence. However, some scholars have contended his descendants were among the exiles who fled to the damp land in the north, so it is possible his blood still lingers in some illiterate and unwashed vessel.

  Kethia is now but a ruin on a hill overlooking a thriving port built by those who ruined her, adding further insult by stealing her name: New Kethia. It is said that when the city fell the Volarians salted the earth so nothing would ever again grow on such hated ground. However, My Emperor will note the illustrations provided by my Volarian hireling show copious weeds sprouting among the weathered stone, so this may well be another mythic aspect to a tale already rich in improbabilities.

  I remain, Sire, your most humble and loyal servant,

  Lord Verniers Alishe Someren

  Author’s Note

  It’s common for readers to have their favourites amongst a cast of characters. Whilst Vaelin surely remains my most appreciated character, Sollis, his principal mentor and Sword Master at the House of the Sixth Order, also features prominently in the mail I receive from readers. I conceived of Sollis as a cross-between the ultimate PE teacher and the ultimate Drill Sergeant. He is certainly cruel at times, never sparing with the cane, whilst being relentlessly critical and intolerant of failure. He’s also fiercely intelligent, faultlessly brave, unwavering in his commitment to the values of his Order and, on rare occasions, shows glimmers of compassion. His extensive career as a Brother of the Sixth Order is hinted at in Blood Song and in Many Are the Dead I wanted to give readers an insight into the importance of his role in prior events. Here we find him already a veteran Brother at a point about ten years before the opening chapter of Blood Song. The story also provided an opportunity for me to indulge me love of the ‘last stand against hopeless odds’ narrative that lies at the heart of many of my favourite films, most particularly James Cameron’s Aliens, Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo and its 1970s re-imagining by John Carpenter, Assault on Precinct 13.

  Many Are the Dead

  - A Raven’s Shadow Novella -

  1

  Many are the dead

  Who stand in witness

  To our crimes.

  - Seordah Poem, Author Unknown

  * * *

  The boy stood frozen, eyes wide and wet, his sword hanging limp and useless from his hand as the Lonak warrior came for him. The lad’s bleached features lacked any real expression, as if the impending certainty of his own death had somehow slipped beneath his notice. Sollis had seen this many times before, the face of one experiencing their first taste of real battle.

  The charging Lonak and his hapless prey were a good dozen yards away. The warrior was wounded, one of Brother Smentil’s arrows jutting from the tattooed flesh of his right arm. The limb flailed like a rag as he closed on the young Realm Guard, using his good arm to raise his war club high. It was a difficult distance for a knife throw, but Sollis had exhausted his arrows during the first few minutes of the skirmish.

  The small, triangular bladed knife spun as it left his hand, describing a deceptively lazy arc through the air before sinking into the back of the Lonak’s neck. Sollis grunted in frustration as he saw that the knife had missed the man’s spine by a clear inch. Nevertheless, his charge came to an abrupt end as the knife struck home. He staggered, war club still raised as he tottered barely a yard from the frozen boy-soldier.

  “Kill him!” Sollis shouted. The youth, however, seemed deaf to the call, continuing to stare with moist but empty eyes at the shuddering man before him. Sollis started forward then halted at the sound of feet scraping loose rock.

  He sank to a crouch, spinning as he did so, the Order blade flickering across the wolf-pelt covered torso of another Lonak. The man’s war club whistled over Sollis’s head as the star-silver edged steel cut through fur and the flesh beneath. The Lonak reeled back, sliced open from belly to shoulder, a shout of fury and pain erupting from his mouth. The wound was plainly mortal but, as was usual with his kind, the Lonak refused to surrender to death whilst there was still a chance to kill the hated Merim Her. Blood streamed from the Lonak’s mouth as he sang, drawing back his club for another blow. Although the words were garbled, Sollis possessed sufficient understanding of his language to discern the cadence of a death-song.

  Seeing another Lonak beyond the dying warrior’s shoulder, Sollis flicked his sword across the man’s throat and stepped to the side to avoid the spear thrust of his charging comrade. It was a good thrust, straight, swift and true, missing Sollis’s chest by bare inches as he twisted, sword extended to skewer the second Lonak through the eye. This one was a woman, tall and lean, head shaven but for the long scalp-lock that sprouted from the base of her skull. She had no chance to give to voice the song that would carry her into the gods’ embrace. Death came the instant the sword point reached her brain, although she hung on the blade twitching for a time until Sollis withdrew it.

  The two Lonak collapsed against each other, forming a strange pyramidal tableau as they sank to the rocky ground, heads resting on the shoulder of the other, almost like lovers sharing a last intimate moment before slumber.

  Sollis blinked and turned away, intending to resume his charge towards the boy-soldier and his assailant, expecting to find the lad lying on the slope with his head bashed in. Instead, he stood over the body of his erstwhile attacker, grunting as he tried in vain to tug his sword free of the Lonak’s ribcage. His face was more animated now, colour returning to the pale immobile mask and tears streaking his cheeks. Apart from the boy’s grunts a familiar post-battle quiet had descended on the canyon.

  Glancing around Sollis saw his brothers descending the western slope. There were sixty besides himself, less than half the number of the war band they had just despatched, but the shock of their attack had done much to even the odds. Distracted by their slaughter of the Realm Guard, the Lonak had neglected to guard their rear.

  As they descended into the canyon the brothers paused to finish off those Lonak who had not yet succumbed to their wounds. It was a long-ingrained tradition of the Sixth Order not to sh
ow mercy to these people, as the only reward was a knife in the back as soon as they recovered sufficiently to attempt an escape. A few Realm Guard survivors stood around clutching wounds or staring in shock at the remnants of their regiment. Over three hundred cavalry had trooped into this narrow canyon just a quarter-hour before. Sollis reckoned less than a third still lived. Most of their horses had survived the ambush, however; the Lonak were always keen to get their hands on Realm-bred stock.

  “You,” he said, advancing towards the boy who was still engaged in a struggle to free his sword from the fallen warrior. “Who’s in charge of this farce?”

  The young Realm Guard gaped at him in blank incomprehension, causing Sollis to wonder if his mind might have been unhinged by the recent carnage. Then the boy blinked and raised a hand from his sword hilt, pointing a finger at the base of the canyon. Sollis felt a small pulse of admiration for the way the youth managed keep the tremble from his hand.

  “There, sir,” he said, his voice coloured by the burr of those raised on the south Asraelin shore. He was a long way from home. “Lord Marshal Al Septa.”

  “I’m a brother not a sir,” Sollis corrected, following the boy’s finger to a pile of bodies in the centre of the canyon. At least a dozen Realm Guard had fallen there, covered by a small forest of the hawk-fletched arrows favoured by the Lonak. The pile of corpses twitched slightly but Sollis’s experienced eye told him none of these men still held on to life.

  “Spared himself the disgrace of a trial before the king, at least,” he muttered. “This mad jaunt north of the pass was his idea, I suppose?”

  “The Wolf Men destroyed three villages before fleeing back to the mountains,” the boy said, a defensive note colouring his tone. “Killing all the folk they could find, and they weren’t quick about it. Lord Al Septa was driven by a desire for justice. He was a good man.”

  “Well.” Sollis pushed the boy aside and took hold of his sword. “All he managed to do was drive most of you to an early communion with the Departed. Good men can be fools too.” He gripped the sword with both hands, putting his boot on the dead man’s chest as he dragged the blade clear. A wet sucking sound rose as it came free, followed by a brief fountain of blood and a nostril stinging stench as the man’s lungs let go of his last breath.

  “Always better to go for the belly or the throat, if you can,” Sollis said, returning the sword to the boy. “Less chance of it getting stuck.”

  “Faith! How old are you, lad?”

  Sollis turned to find Brother Oskin approaching, his weathered features drawn into a squint as he surveyed the boy-soldier. Red Ears, his ever present Cumbraelin hunting hound, trotted from his side to snuffle at the Lonak corpse, her long tongue flicking out to lap at the blood leaking from its wound. Oskin allowed the beast a few more licks before nudging her away with a jab of his boot. It had been thanks to Red Ears’ nose that they tracked the Lonak war band, so it would have been churlish to deny her a small reward, although Sollis wished the beast had managed to find them soon enough to prevent this massacre.

  “Fourteen,” the boy replied, casting a nervous glance at the massive hound as Red Ears sauntered towards him, licking the blood from her chops. “I’ll be fifteen in a month.”

  “The king sends children to fight the Lonak,” Oskin said with a despairing shake of his head. “Your mother know where you are?”

  A certain hardness crept into the lad’s gaze as he replied in a low mutter, “No. She’s dead.”

  Oskin gave a soft sigh before turning back to Sollis. “Smentil took a shaman alive, thought you might want to talk to him. Best be quick if you do, I doubt he’ll last long.”

  Sollis nodded and moved off, issuing orders over his shoulder as he climbed the far slope of the canyon. “Get these horses rounded up. See if there’s anything to be done for the Realm Guard wounded, and see if you can find one with any kind of rank. This lot will need a captain for the journey south.”

  “That I will, brother.” Oskin clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder and guided him to the canyon floor where most of the Realm Guard had begun to gather. “Come on, whelp. You can point me to a sergeant, if there’s any left.”

  “It’s Jehrid,” the boy said in a sullen mutter as Oskin led him away.

  Sollis found Brother Smentil standing over the slumped and bleeding form of a wiry Lonak of middling years. His status as shaman was proclaimed by the swirling tattoo covering his shaven skull. The exact meanings of the various symbols with which the Lonak covered themselves were still beyond Sollis’s understanding, but he knew enough to distinguish the signs of a warrior or a hunter from that of a shaman.

  Gut wound, Smentil told Sollis, his hands making the signs with a flowing precision that came from years of necessary practice. The tall brother held the unenviable distinction of being the only member of the Sixth Order to be captured by the Lonak and survive the experience, albeit losing his tongue in the process. Consequently, the Order’s sign-language was his primary means of communication apart from the occasional written note in a near illegible script.

  Sollis angled his head as he surveyed the dying shaman, finding himself confronted by a typically hate-filled glare. He spoke as he locked eyes with Sollis, bloody spittle spilling from his lips and staining his teeth as he formed the words. “Merim Her, fogasht ehl mentah. Shiv illahk tro dohimish.” Merim her, always there are more. Like maggots on a corpse.

  “Ver dohimishin,” Sollis replied: You’re dying. He sank to his haunches, speaking on in Lonak, “Do you wish a quick death?”

  The shaman snarled, face quivering with the effort of meeting Sollis’s gaze. “I want nothing from you.”

  “No raids for nearly a year,” Sollis went on. “Now you lead a war band of many spears to our lands. You steal nothing, take no treasure or captives. All you do is burn and kill. Why?”

  A suspicious glint crept into the shaman’s eye as he narrowed his gaze. “You know why… blue-cloak,” he said in a hard, pain-filled rasp.

  “No,” Sollis assured him with a humourless smile. “I don’t. Tell me.” He held the shaman’s gaze, seeing no sign he might yield. Sollis was tempted to draw his dagger and start probing the man’s wound, though past experience told him the Lonak were too inured to pain for such encouragement to bear fruit.

  “I can take you with us,” he said instead. “Back to the Pass. We have healers there. Once you are made whole I will put you in a cage and parade you through the lands you raided. Merim Her will spit upon you, cast their filth at you, and no Lonak will ever hear your story again.”

  The shaman’s nostrils flared as he drew in a series of rapid breaths. Blood began to seep through the fingers the man had clamped over his wound and Sollis saw his eyes take on a familiar, unfocused cast. “No, blue-cloak,” the shaman said, a crimson torrent now flowing from his mouth as he grinned at Sollis, speaking in harsh grunts. “I… am being called… to the Gods’ embrace… where my story will live forever… in their ears.”

  “Tell me!” Sollis reached out to clamp a hand on the shaman’s neck, gripping hard. “Why did you raid?”

  “You… Because of you…” The shaman’s grin broadened, allowing a slick of blood to cover Sollis’s hand. “You came into the mountains… and brought that which is known only to the Mahlessa… She decreed… vengeance…”

  The shaman’s eyes dimmed and closed, his head lolling forward as Sollis felt his final pulse, no more than the faintest flutter against his palm.

  What did he mean? Smentil’s hands asked as Sollis rose, hefting his canteen to wash away the blood. Like most of the brothers Smentil had only a partial understanding of Lonak. Sollis, by contrast, had used his years at the Pass to learn as much as he could. It had been a tortuous business, reliant on rarely taken captives and the few relevant books he had gleaned from the Third Order library. Whilst Lonak prisoners almost never divulged information of any value, they were always enthusiastic in assailing their captors with all the insults they could mus
ter, which added greatly to his vocabulary and understanding of syntax. It also meant he spoke a version of Lonak even harsher than the original.

  “Rova kha ertah Mahlessa,” he said, flicking the pinkish water away and turning his gaze north. The sun was well past its zenith and the shadows grew long on the mountains. High on the granite slopes the stiffening wind swept snow into a clear blue sky. As always when he gazed upon these peaks there was the sense of his scrutiny being returned. Bare as they seemed, the chances of journeying through the Lonak dominion unobserved were always slender at best. Veteran brothers had a saying, ‘The mountains have eyes.’ She’ll learn of what happened here within days, he thought. What will she do then?

  “‘That which is known only to the Mahlessa,’” he elaborated, turning back to Smentil. “The Dark, brother. He was talking about the Dark.”

  He made for the crest of the slope and began to descend to where they had tethered their horses. “Best get these guardsmen into some semblance of order,” he said. “We’re returning to the Pass with all speed. The Brother Commander must know of this.”

  2

  It took a night and a day to reach the Skellan Pass. Sollis pushed his mingled company hard, maintaining a punishing pace and refusing to rest come nightfall despite the condition of the wounded Realm Guard, three of whom expired before the journey was done. He had expected some level of condemnation from their fellow guardsmen but they remained a mostly silent lot. Throughout the journey their eyes continually roved the peaks and valleys in wary trepidation, faces pale with a fear that wouldn’t fade until they were far from these lands.