by David Hair
Kore’s Blood! Valdyr gripped his zweihandle, standing his ground even as his legs screamed at him to run.
‘VRULPA! VRULPA!’ the Vitezai men shouted in alarm, firing again, but shields flared and their arrows fell uselessly to the ground – then twin streams of scarlet fire blazed across the dark beast and two men fell, screaming in agony as their clothing ignited.
The vrulpa bounded up the slope roaring, ‘SARKANY!’
29
The Vrulpa
Sorcery: Wizardry
There are beings who inhabit the aether, that shadow-place halfway between this world and the next. They have always been there, or so they say. Most are simple, stupid things, no more dangerous than the birds of the air. But some are as complex and perilous as the greatest magi, and they must be approached with great caution. ‘Daemon’, we call them, a term that in Frandian implies evil; which is apt, considering the perils in dealing with them.
LORJA LAMACH, VERELONI WIZARD, 856
Mollachia, Yuros
Maicin 935
As the vrulpa crested the slope, its head swivelled until it found Valdyr. Its amber eyes lit like small stars and it screamed in hatred, then ploughed into the first row of men who ran to heroically interpose themselves between the beast and their prince. The vrulpa raised its giant paws and a sheet of flame tore into them, hurling them backwards, hair and clothing ablaze. The creature smashed a spearman’s spine on a boulder, then caught another in its antlers, spearing him in half a dozen places, before tossing him aside.
As the men reeled, it fixed its eyes again on Valdyr and screeched, ‘SARKANY!’
‘Holy Kore, be with me,’ Valdyr prayed. He saw Iztven and Ghili try to block it, chanting something and lighting a mesh of fire, but the beast tore through it and just a heartbeat later had ripped Ghili’s head from her shoulder with one great paw-swipe. Then it stamped on Iztven, its hooves caving in the Sydian mage’s ribcage, roaring as arrows thudded into its torso. It barely paused to snap them off before it was bounding onwards. Then Dragan stepped in front, his sword drawn, and Tibor took up position on his left, while more of their men converged on the vrulpa, charging in with weapons raised.
Another rolling wave of flame broke over them, sending more men, Tibor among them, rolling to the ground, beating at their clothing – then in a blur of claws and antlers, the vrulpa reared up in the middle of the conflagration and hurled Dragan thirty feet through the air, its gnostic shields effortlessly deflecting all their weapons, swords, spears and arrows alike.
‘SARKANY!’
Nilasz ran towards it, but the beast’s claws struck him, pushing him aside, and he went down in a writhing heap – and then the vrulpa was on Valdyr, swiping at his head with bear-sized claws. Valdyr ducked and swung and the beast caught his blade in its left hand, losing three claws, but closing its palm about the steel, not even flinching as blood sprayed from the lacerated flesh. The other claw swept around; Valdyr tried to wrench free his trapped blade, but succeeded only in tripping backwards down the slope.
The vrulpa laughed, a horribly human sound, and followed, almost contemptuously grabbing the spear someone was trying to skewer it with and planting the weapon in its owner’s chest. Then it leaped at Valdyr again and Valdyr dodged sideways to avoid being crushed, but in the dark, he’d lost his bearings and there was no sideways, only down, and he tumbled headlong into the darkness. The air was knocked out of him, his head cracked on a fallen tree trunk that could have broken his neck and he slammed back-first into a half-buried rock, only his armour saving his spine.
The vrulpa appeared at the top of the rise and blazed blue fire at Valdyr, who somehow managed to twist away just in time; instead of incinerating him, the blast struck the rock and smashed an inch-deep furrow, sending stone chips flying. My sword? He’d lost it in the fall, but there it was, lying just a few feet away. He reached for it, but the vrulpa gestured and instead it spun to the monster’s hand.
‘SARKANY!’ It leaped, effortlessly swinging Valdyr’s sword, as Valdyr fled down the slope. Above them, the Vitezai were bellowing his name. Torches appeared on the rim above as the vrulpa came bounding at him, yowling like a wolf. It hacked at him, the sword afire; he dodged behind a tree trunk – and the blade stuck eight inches deep in the timber. The pine shook and its bark kindled as the beast pulled the blade free, then a flurry of arrows sleeted down. Most snapped on the creature’s powerful shielding, but one got through and buried itself in the beast’s back – it barely noticed.
Valdyr turned and ran again, dodging mage-bolts as he zigzagged down the slope, until a ball of fire blazed over his left shoulder and burst into the bush he’d been making for. He veered the other way, leaped down the bank and into a tiny stream, but he misjudged, caught his foot on an unsteady rock and stumbled, howling in silent agony as his ankle gave way and he came crashing down into a few inches of icy water.
He peered around to see the Vitezai were far above him – it was alarming how far he’d dropped in the last few seconds – then rolled over and tried to rise, but his ankle screamed and he fell to his knees. He had no time to get to his feet because the vrulpa had landed a dozen feet away, his blade raised, howling triumphantly.
This is it . . .
But something else answered: a bellowing growl, a stag’s roar, from somewhere close enough to make the air shiver as it resonated through the gully. Valdyr looked around, terrified, expecting to see another vrulpa, but the monster chasing him had stopped and was sniffing the air. It was raising its blade again, ready to launch its final attack, when something blurred through the trees and launched itself through the air. Whatever it was slammed into the vrulpa’s shielding and carved straight through – and now Valdyr could see it was a massive white stag, with antlers that pierced the vrulpa’s torso in a dozen places, then the stag planted its hooves and viciously ripped the points sideways, sending the vrulpa hurling through the air . . .
. . . just as the tree it was spinning towards seemed to move – impossible, surely? – and with a sickening crunch, the monster’s back slammed into the tree and a thick branch burst out the front of its chest.
Valdyr stared as smaller branches – he would have sworn it was new growth – erupted from the tree-trunk at an impossible pace before turning like tentacles and slamming their tips into the vrulpa’s eye-sockets, ears, nostrils and mouth and flesh. The tree somehow engulfed the beast, then ripped it apart – blood spurted, and was immediately sucked into bark and soil. The earth at the base of the tree base boiled with beetles, and in a few moments there was nothing left but a few ripped shreds of dried-up fur and a shattered set of mismatched bones.
Holy Kore be with me . . .
Something snorted behind his ear—
—and he turned and looked up at the white stag silhouetted against the faint moonlight – and shining through the creature. Then flaming torches lit the gully, he blinked and in that instant the stag was gone, as if it had never been there. He sat up in the frigid water as the Vitezai streamed down the slope. The monster had vanished too, leaving little more than those few scraps of desiccated hide. His sword lay discarded by the stream.
Rothgar Baredge was the first to arrive, his cloak smouldering, his side soaked with blood, swiftly followed by Dragan Zhagy, directing a stream of abuse at the old gods of Mollachia – until he saw Valdyr, when he fell to his knees, half in the water, crying, ‘My Prince! My Prince—!’ He seized Valdyr and held him as if he were a child – then he looked around. ‘Where’s the vrulpa?’
‘It’s gone,’ Valdyr panted, wincing as he tested his ankle.
‘Gone?’
How in Hel do I explain when I don’t really know what I saw . . . ‘The White Stag,’ he muttered in Dragan’s ear, still panting as the Gazda helped him rise, keeping his shoulder under Valdyr’s arm to steady him. ‘It came and . . . well, the beast is gone.’
‘The White Stag? You saw it? The land itself protects you, Valdyr Sarkany,’ he said, reverent
awe in his voice.
Valdyr looked, but found no hoof-prints in the gravel.
*
Sacrista Delestre lay trembling in her protective circle as wind and rain lashed down. She’d been oblivious to the weather, the pines tossing in the storm, the sliver of Luna lost in clouds, but now she shook herself violently and sat up, pulling her cloak around her.
What the Hel was that?
She kindled her wards, imagining a thousand terrible things. More important than trying to figure out what had destroyed the body of the daemon was where its spirit might now be – if Ajakhiaemus got loose in a human body, what might it not do?
She didn’t panic, not yet: daemons did sometimes fail; that was a risk of the trade. Other wizards could break the geas and send the creature back, or some other mischance could free a daemon. A good wizard was always prepared. Ajakhiaemus might have found another body, but more likely it was simply dissipating into the aether. Either way, it only had a few minutes to try and harm her. The daemon would be steaming back along their link . . .
The first priority was always defence, and she rekindled her circle, while trying to work out exactly what had happened: Valdyr Sarkany was at his mercy, and then . . . What? What did I see? A pale blur?
Something had struck Ajakhiaemus from behind, punching through the beast’s skull, and the daemon’s spirit had been ripped from the body. The power she’d glimpsed at that instant was puzzling, but it could simply have been a boar-spear, perhaps wielded by another mage – she’d not seen Kyrik Sarkany . . .
That must be it: Kyrik slew my daemon while it was focused on Valdyr.
She was careful to remain inside her protective circle, drawing on the gnosis to keep from freezing. Now she sensed Ajakhiaemus – not hunting her as a freed daemon might, but disoriented and torn. Once she felt ready, she called him the rest of the way.
She reached in and re-established her bindings, then asked, ‘Did you kill the Sarkany?’ It had been hard to tell in the blur of shadows.
The masked face was bowed, its expression bitter. ‘Lady, I failed. I had him, but something like a stag – a white stag, appeared and then – I was struck down and cast into nothing.’
‘Damn.’ She put her hands on her hips, wondering. It took a lot of time and danger to break in a powerful daemon, and she’d spent several years on Ajakhiaemus. He’d be of no use to her for months after this. She sighed, and let him go. ‘Dismissed, Slave.’ Then she sank to her haunches, fighting her disappointment. She’d really thought this would solve all their problems.
It should have worked. What went wrong?
Magas Gorge, Mollachia
Maicin 935
Valdyr Sarkany sat on a ledge overlooking a thundering waterfall in Magas Gorge. It was dusk, and the raiders were strung out along a series of small campsites, all with covered fires and concealed tents. The weather was mild now, by Mollachian standards at least, and they’d seen Rondian skiffs in the air, trying to pick up their trail.
He’d been thinking about Iztven and Ghili, wondering how a legend could bring two people across such distances, and why they would abandon their quest to die protecting him. Barbarians though they were, he’d almost liked them. Only a few days ago they’d saved his life against the battle-mage, and now this . . . He’d buried them himself, given them a proper Kore burial, even though they were pagans.
May Kore forgive them their sins . . .
Since the monster’s attack, Dragan had abandoned the notion of raiding south of the Reztu, fearing that if one such creature could find them, others could too. The men still spoke of the beast as a vrulpa, but Dragan had a more realistic name.
‘They say Robear Delestre’s frigid sister is a daemon-caller,’ he growled.
Valdyr still couldn’t explain the white stag, and Dragan had told him to keep silent about it. ‘White stags were seen when Zlateyr died – they’re an ill omen.’
One new recruit told them Robear Delestre had hanged the family of a Vitezai man on suspicion alone, no proof – although most of the secret order were single or widowers, they all had ties to someone. Anger was growing among them, and it felt wrong to be retreating north.
‘Where do we raid next, Prince Valdyr?’ called Dimi from across the fire. The young man with a thin beard reminded Valdyr of a young Kyrik. ‘Banezust?’ Dimi had family there.
Valdyr was flattered that such a question might be directed at him; it was a sign of growing acceptance and status. The men clearly saw something more in him than he did himself; they’d seen the brutal scars on his back from the floggings he’d endured in Dhassa and equated them with courage, not with weakness and captivity, as he did. And they were all convinced he’d slain the vrulpa.
But he couldn’t deny his kinship with them, and the land. Mollachia was hard, yes, but She was his Mother, and She cared for Her children, gave them sanctuary in places where outsiders wouldn’t survive. Perhaps She sent the white stag?
Valdyr made a noncommittal gesture. ‘Dimi, the redcloaks are thick as fleas around the mines. Rothgar’s been down there; he’s seen them.’
‘I’ve a cousin who’s a forester in the lower Magas,’ Sandro, one of the scouts, put in. ‘He told me the Imperials only patrol the main roads and settlements. They’re not helping the Delestres in the upper valley at all.’
‘Robear the Red is offering gold for local trackers to guide his patrols,’ Nilasz put in. He had his arm in a sling, but refused to rest.
‘No true man would accept,’ Dragan rumbled.
‘I heard the Grzdy brothers had taken it on,’ Nilasz replied. ‘And some of the Rimoni gypsies from the camp outside Rokafaj. They’ve got no reason to love us.’
‘The Grzdy brothers are scum, and so are gypsies,’ Dragan growled. ‘My point stands: no true Mollach would betray us.’
‘I heard it was Matez Grzdy who betrayed the Goldoni family, them who Robear hanged,’ Dimi put in, his eyes simmering. ‘I’d like to stick a sword in Matez’s belly.’
‘Where do the Grzdy family live?’ Valdyr asked as the men fell silent.
‘Are you sure you want to take that path, lad?’ Tibor murmured.
Valdyr looked away, thinking, Kyrik would take a moral stand, but he’s not here. ‘If the Rondians can hang our people, Matez Grzdy deserves no less.’
‘I’m in,’ Dimi said instantly.
Half a dozen other hands went up, then Tibor reluctantly raised his. ‘I’ll lead this. Someone needs to keep these young hounds on the leash.’ He would take his party back south, a circuitous route that would eventually get them to Ujtabor – a week there, a week back, he predicted. Meanwhile Valdyr and Dragan would take the rest of the men back towards the camp at Jegto, as planned.
Valdyr farewelled Tibor, then he and Dragan led the men northwest, but they’d gone barely a mile when a man trotted down the riverbank and hailed them.
‘Hai, Larin,’ Sandro called, embracing the newcomer. ‘What are you doing here?’
The newcomer went straight to Valdyr. ‘My Prince, I have news: your brother has returned to Jegto.’ His voice was neutral, hinting at problems.
‘Is Kyrik well?’ Valdyr asked anxiously. ‘Did he bring riders?’
‘Ysh, ysh: he arrived four days ago, at the head of a mighty column. He despatched me immediately to find you.’ Larin looked at Dragan, his face still troubled. ‘Five thousand riders, every one of them a deadly bowman!’
The Vitezai looked at each other uncertainly. This was good news, certainly, and yet Larin clearly had more to say. They urged him to speak on.
‘Prince Kyrik says they’re just the vanguard,’ Larin said. ‘Come autumn, the rest of the clan will arrive. Thirty thousand men, women an
d children, all up.’
Valdyr felt his jaw drop. He went east to buy a few riders . . . What in Hel is he doing?
Even Dragan looked stunned. ‘How will we feed them all?’ he wondered, though that was the least of their unspoken concerns.
How will we control them? Valdyr wondered.
‘Kyrik has brought magi also – eight of their Sfera in the vanguard alone—’ Larin shook his head in wonder. ‘He said between us and them, we could likely go head to head with the Delestres.’
They all nodded at that, but no one was smiling now. Valdyr remembered the Vlpa camp all too well: the dark faces with judging, demanding eyes, the chest-beating men and fierce women.
Gods, what are we doing to our homeland, letting these savages in? Thirty thousand! Once they’re here, we’ll not be Mollachia any more . . .
Dragan raised a hand for silence. ‘Brothers, we must march north to support our Prince.’ The gravity in his voice infected the men. There were no more cheers, just a solemn touch of their right hands to their hearts.
They can sense the dangers here as easily as I can. Kyrik, what are you doing?
While the men prepared to move off again, Valdyr drew Dragan aside. ‘What do you make of this?’
‘A full Sydian clan? We can’t hide that many people. It’s going to be open war, Prince.’ The Gazda looked at Valdyr, his eyes hooded. ‘We must force conflict quickly, while only this vanguard group are here: win the victory swiftly, then persuade Kyrik to forbid the rest of the clan entry. Otherwise we’ll be swamped.
‘How did Kyrik convince so many to come?’ he wondered.
‘I don’t know,’ Dragan replied, ‘but I doubt we’ll like the answer.’
