Angelslayer: The Winnowing War

by K. Michael Wright

  Agapenor was now out of sight—vanished into the dark.

  Rhywder could no longer feel the pain of his wounds from the howlers. The song swept away all gloom of dark and stilled the whisper of the jungle. It had even begun to arouse him. He turned and started in its direction. Whatever it was, it would help; it would give him rest, and he needed rest so badly. But even then, as he walked, he tried to use the edge of his sword to keep from fully being spellbound, slicing through his palm, hoping the sting of pain would wake him, but the lithe voices were numbing all his thoughts and promising sweet balm.

  He stepped into a large, circular clearing hewn out of the jungle. A bonfire raged, sending sparks into the night. Women were gathered, singing, moving as though the summer wind had taught them the dance. They were naked, oiled—long, night-black hair. Light red skin. Perfect, every one, as beautiful as anything he had ever seen. He was wrong, there was no danger here. They welcomed him, lured him closer, their arms waving, fingers beckoning.

  “Come, Little Fox.” They knew his name!

  With a screech, one dropped onto his back. The suddenness of it jolted him, and Rhywder was able to break the spell just as her teeth came for his throat. Rhywder took hold of her arm, slammed her into the ground, and planted his blade through her left breast. He stood, pulling the blade free, flinging blood. More were coming, some tumbling, others dancing, spinning as they came for him. He could hear Agapenor screaming.

  He knew the intent now, the spell was broken, all these Unchurian women wanted was his blood. They thirsted madly for human blood, and the blood of warriors was the richest of all. The blood of the valiant was like the finest, richest wine to them.

  Close, they rushed him. Rhywder was able to kill two before he was seized, arm and leg. To keep them from getting the sword, he shoved it through his armband, anchored against his lower arm.

  He was being carried by girls toward the fire. He noticed their painted eyes, their naked shoulders. One hissed at him, catlike. Her lips were full and bloodred, her teeth a brilliant white, the canines elongated, fanged.

  Rhywder glanced skyward. The moon was at its zenith. Communio—they had timed their feeding to the mid-sky communion of the sabbat.

  There came times to die, but this wasn’t one of them.

  He drew breath and began to fight for all he was worth. He kicked one foot free and rammed it into a pretty face, knocking the girl back, blood flushing from her button nose. He twisted, jerking free of their hold. He almost got to his feet, but they overwhelmed him again and this time threw him to the ground. One tore open the front of his tunic. Another, on her knees, came over him, her soft, puffy lips parting his, sensuous and hot. She snipped his bottom lip with her razor teeth, chuckling a little girl’s laugh. He glanced to see one sliding down between his legs, mouth agape. That sight gave him inhuman strength.

  Rhywder screamed and heaved two of them off him. Another he grabbed by the hair and flung to the side. He slammed at them with fists, shook them off until he managed to get to his knees. He pulled his blade free and started killing—ripping through windpipes, breasts, eyes, anything he could strike that would be effective. They finally managed to pin his sword arm, but though they tried to get his sword, he clung to the blade so tightly his fingers might have been welded to the bloodied leather wrap of the hilt. New teeth sunk into his neck from behind. One bit into his thigh and began to suck. The sucking stung with sharp, sweet pain, though at the same time it infused him with an opiatelike drug he almost welcomed.

  All the singing had stopped. It was feeding time now.

  Teeth were shearing through Rhywder’s skin everywhere, his legs, arms, sides. It was truly not the way he wanted to die. He looked to the heavens and whispered the name of the mothering star; he called out to the Light Whose Name Is Splendor.

  Suddenly, the Galaglean appeared above him, bloodied, teeth marks riddling his skin everywhere, one arm chewed off, half his right leg gone with gouges and teeth marks spilling rich blood, but still he was still strong. He pulled a girl off Rhywder, flinging her high and tumbling her into the night. He grabbed the hair of another, snapping the neck. He stomped in the back of a third, cracking the spine like a dry branch. He thrust out a hand.

  “Take hold!” he commanded.

  Rhywder grasped Agapenor’s wrist and was wrenched up and thrown clear. He hit the ground and quickly sprung to his feet. “Now run, you little bastard!” Agapenor screamed.

  Rhywder did—he ran. He heard them bringing Agapenor down, but he could not help and he did not look back.

  He found himself wildly leaping through the thicket, crashing through the brush, racing blindly through trees and creepers. There was a sound of pattering feet and whispered snarling. He glanced behind. They were coming for him—many on all fours. He was not going to outrun them—but he had managed one trick. He had managed to keep hold of his short sword and he ran with it tucked against his chest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Albino

  Krysis waited at the white painted fence Eryian had built them seven years ago. He had purposely chosen rough wood stakes instead of smoothed ones, and he had oiled it and then let the winters, spring rains, and white summer sun paint it. Now it seemed just a part of the forest at the edge of the cabin. Eryian had built the cabin himself and beside it, moorings and dock works, built from the wooden beams of a slaver ship he had once taken at high sea—at the time sailing with Rhywder.

  He was young then, Eryian. It was just before the gathering wars, just before he left with Argolis for the northland. His face had been unfairly handsome. Krysis sometimes thought he was embarrassed of it, the way some women looked at him. Though everything about him spoke otherwise, Eryian had always insisted he was nothing extraordinary, that in other circumstances he might have been a cobbler, or a blacksmith, no more warlord than a land plodder. In fact, while his liege, Argolis, lived in the stone and timber castle of Terith-Aire, overlooking the sea, Eryian had found a far piece of land near a quiet bay nestled into the thick forest northwest of the city. Of course, Krysis spent long months never seeing him, raising Eryian’s son. When he did return, she could sometimes watch soul and lifeblood return to him as he shed the warlord and let himself look out his eyes at her. He loved her, she knew that. He let himself be almost human when alone with her and she knew he did that nowhere else.

  “One day I will not leave, Krysis,” he would often tell her, nights, alone with Little Eryian asleep. “One day, much like an ordinary day, I will ride back and we will become plodders—same as you might find digging potatoes on the outskirts of the East of the Land.”

  “I am pleased, Eryian—although I am not going to hold my breath.”

  It was as though he had heard nothing sarcastic. He nodded, continued on. “Plain weft, hunter’s weft, maybe a bit soiled—that instead of armor. My bow, perhaps I will keep it. And throwing knives. The rest of it I will leave behind.”

  “Your sword?”

  “Into the sea, my love, into the ocean.”

  He smiled, stared at her a moment through the dark blue-ice of his eyes, eyes that no matter how they laughed or how they sparkled alone with her, still held beneath them a death veil. The ice eyes of Eryian were like the cutting edge of a sword—always holding a certain promise.

  And this night, waiting for him as the storm came in hard from the south, Krysis felt a claw in her chest. She had felt it since morning. She tried not to look too concerned as night drew on, but she had began to pace Eryian’s rough-hewn porch and then Little Eryian had finally taken notice. He had stepped past her to stare down the rough dirt path that led to the forest.

  “What is wrong, Mother?” he demanded in a stern voice.

  “Nothing, Little Eryian. I was just worried of the storm.”

  He turned the pale, whitish eyes on her with unnerving effect. Even now, with Little Eryian seven years and eight months, she still could not get used to his eyes. He had been born albino. He was like a marble s
culpture, perfect in every way, and the piercing white eyes could unnerve even Eryian’s warriors.

  “It is Father, is it not? Something is happening—something not yet, but something coming.”

  She started to shake her head, but as he could with most people, Little Eryian had already seen through her. He lifted his bow from beside the door and slung his quiver over his shoulder.

  “I am going for the city. If Father is in trouble, I can help. I will saddle the stallion.”

  He was almost off the porch, but she spun him about and held him firmly by his shoulders, kneeling to look in his eyes. “Little Eryian, listen to me—if your father, the Eagle of Argolis, is in trouble, then you, my seven-year-young lad, will stay here, beside your mother.”

  He studied her carefully. “You are afraid? Is that how you mean it?”

  She nodded. “Yes, very afraid.”

  “Then I will stay.”

  “Thank you, Little Eryian. Now, do me a favor and tell old Cathyis to weather down your father’s ship. I sense this storm is going to be harsh.” “Yes, Mother.”

  Little Eryian dropped over the railing. Watching him walk down the pathway, Krysis felt a tug at her heart. Time was turning, she knew that. Something was closing on them, and it was so heavy, so dark she could even not imagine what it could be.

  Chapter Twenty

  Silvery Eagle

  Eryian had few memories of his past. It was something he never spoke of, something he had kept secret from all but his king. As he watched a storm forming from the south, standing on a high tower of the castle, he wondered once more why all his memories before joining with Argolis twenty and five years ago were shadowy, whispery images so obscure they made no sense. An injury or disease might have explained it, but Eryian knew this was something else, something of the star knowledge. It was the knowing that veiled his past.

  It left him with no idea where he had acquired his deadly skills. He had no memory of learning or training, no memories of war, fighting, or slaughter, and yet he had come to Argolis unequaled as a slayer. Argolis had suggested to Eryian that he might be a firstborn—that his memories were veiled because his past was so deep in the beginnings. But none of the scions of Uriel lived as the patriarchs or the Nephilim—ageless for centuries—nor were there any such legends concerning the Daath. But then, eventually Eryian wondered who he really was. In the two and one-half decades they had been together, while Ar-golis’s hair had silvered and his face had grown creases, Eryian looked barely older, than the day they had met.

  It seemed strange that time could move so quickly. It was only two and a half decades ago when the dark season of the gathering wars had begun. Mars was ascendant and the Blue Stars were at their zenith the day Argolis had gathered his vast armies upon the plains of Terith-Aire. There, the king had named Eryian, almost a stranger among them, their warlord, second only to himself in matters of war and state. Argolis told the people that day that Eryian had been sent in time of need, and those words had never been questioned. There was a mystique that lay over the warlord ever since. Argolis had selected him over all the armies of the Daath on faith alone. But it seemed Argolis’ faith was not unfounded.

  Eryian had formed the Daath into the feared legions of Shadow Warriors they had now become. In mock battles before the wide, hilly rages and open land of Parminion’s foothills he had prepared them in mock battles. He had organized the numbers of their armies. They were natural slayers, deadly by instinct alone, but Eryian had formed them into tight-knit units, taught them to deploy and fight as cohorts, each giving allegiance to their individual captains and leaders. He had taught the cavalry how to work the flanks of a battle, taught the shieldbearers how to quickly build and man defenses, taught the axemen how to fight uphill, the engineers how to construct deep river crossings, and the marines how to deploy against an enemy on soft sand. But more than anything, Eryian had taught the Daathan warriors how to die well.

  In fact, after the gathering wars had ended, Eryian would have valued a single Daathan legion the equivalent of three Etlantian, and the Etlantians had armies that had fought since time had begun.

  It was Eryian, as well, who formed and trained the King’s Guard, elite warriors he named Shadow Walkers. Eryian had chosen the strongest of the Daath, selecting only the valiant. He then taught them skills no other warriors on Earth possessed.

  There were silkworms that grew in certain parts of the East of the Land. Eryian had taught the warriors, not their maids or women, but the warriors themselves how to weave the silvery threads into exact, bound patterns that formed signets capable of capturing the power of the word they symbolized. He then taught the Shadow Walkers how these cloaks were used, how to perform with dexterity the precise, adept movements that took years to perfect. They gave the elite warriors the ability to literally vanish for seconds at a time. It seemed a small thing, but in battle it was a valuable and deadly asset. Yet, Eryian had no idea where he had learned these secrets, how he had known to even find the worms of the forest that spawned the silvery thread.

  It was Eryian who told Argolis the tribes of Dannu must be gathered as one, no matter the cost, no matter the price. Once he had named Eryian his Eagle, Argolis had never questioned his judgment or counsel. The king unleashed the newly formed Daathan legions upon their own kindred, the blood tribes of the goddess Dannu, their mothering star. What became known as the gathering wars lasted eight long years. They were years that would leave a swath of blood across the homeland, a stain that would ever linger in the shadow of innocents lost. Yet, there had been no choice. Eryian understood deep within there would come a time in the future when the Daath and their kindred tribes could no longer be scattered, fighting for dominance, or squabbling over the rights to pitiful fields or streams as they had for centuries. Eryian’s knowledge was certain. A day in the future was coming when a storm would gather against these people, a storm so dark and powerful that if they were not united as one force, they would be swept as chaff before the winnower’s blade.

  Eryian never questioned the source of his knowledge. It was connected like a silvery tether to the seventh star of the Pleiades and to the Light of Severity that was Elyon. Yet he could not explain how he had come by it, for he remembered no mentors, no priests. He had never studied scriptures or pondered lineages or histories. It was the knowing inside him. It unveiled secrets within him that even wandering prophets of Enoch that Eryian occasionally had brought to the palace to question could only guess at.

  Who was he? And why had he been delivered to these people, strangers to him, even though by their skin and eyes they were obviously his own blood. He searched the heavens from the parapet of the castle, demanding answers. He had done all that was asked of him; he had followed every charge given him. He had raised up a king, Argolis, and had given him the finest warriors in the world to stand against the dark he had known would one day come against them. But that day was no longer coming, it had arrived, and ironically, Argolis had become its first casualty.

  Eryian watched the storm with angry eyes, how it slowly turned, how it seemed to have drawn in the night, gathering it, coalescing into a slowly turning mass of black clouds. Eryian recognized it for what it was—no ordinary storm. He clearly saw the tails and streamers of the whirlers, the living beings that followed the path of their angel lords. And what troubled him the most was that his own memories, shadowy as they were, held an image of this angel’s eyes as vivid and lucid as his own reflected in a mirror. Yet it did not include the memory of when or where he had met the death lord whose given name of the choirs of heaven was Azazel. He knew this living creature to be an ancient enemy—but how ancient? And why?

  There were no answers. Eryian could only watch the whirlers from afar, knowing these were the winds of what would be remembered by mankind as the winnowing war. Azazel and his children were moving slowly for Hericlon. Only their numbers slowed them. Moving such vast armies took time, even for Azazel. Yet, if he managed to breach the gat
e, the battle that would follow would not be one of conquest—it would be a war of annihilation. Eryian had not believed he would live to see it, let alone be left with the charge of once more leading them.

  He held a slight hope that Rhywder had gotten through in time to learn the threat, to know its numbers, to guage how close the armies of Du’ldu had gotten to the ancient mountain passage. And if Rhywder had been as adept as Eryian knew him to be, the Little Fox would have dispatched messengers for Galaglea where Quietus, the obtuse king who called himself the Falcon, would be able to marshal his two legions for Hericlon. He was within two days’ striking distance of the gate. In truth, the obstinate Galaglean king was their only hope. If Hericlon could be held until the winter snows struck the Parminions, even Azazel could not cross, at least not with his children, his unknown armies that were without number. But Eryian knew that reaching Hericlon after winter’s fall was an error Azazel would certainly never make. That he would make any error at all seemed unthinkable and yet—in a way, the mighty lord of death had already made at least one.

  The assassins Azazel had sent this day were deft and skilled. They must have been carefully chosen, and their mission was to have taken out the scions of the Daath. If Azazel had succeeded in eliminating the seed of Uriel, he would have severed the root that bore the archangel’s lineage on Earth. Prophecy itself would have died on its withering vine. But Azazel had failed. One still lived. The boy, Loch, had survived. Earlier, he had reached Terith-Aire from the north, bloodied, weary, but alive. Still, Loch was young and had never seen, let alone waged, a war. It was as if both Elyon and His fallen son, Azazel, were toying with them all. Perhaps that was the truest answer in the end. Perhaps it was all a game played of star lords and those who walked heaven’s rim, including Elyon Himself.