Ashes of a Black Frost

by Chris Evans

  “Our best bet is to scream bloody murder and charge,” Yimt said, shifting his drukar from hand to hand.

  “I thought that was a bad trait.”

  “There’s a time and a place for everything, and in this particular time and place, a good old-fashioned berserker charge is just the ticket.”

  Konowa flexed his fingers around the pommel of his saber and rolled his shoulders. They still had the frost fire to call on, and they were close enough to the fort that maybe help would arrive in time. It would have to do.

  “Ready?” Konowa asked, moving up to stand beside Yimt.

  “Time for these rakkes to hear my closing argument,” Yimt said.

  Konowa groaned, but smiled. “You might want the Viceroy to write up your briefs. On three. One . . . two . . .”

  A volley of musket fire lit the night, its sharp cracks cutting through the snow-deadened air. Rakkes screamed. Konowa stuck his head over the rock in front of him. Corporal Feylan stood fifteen yards away with Yimt’s squad.

  “Hurry, Major, there’s a lot more coming up behind you.”

  The pair climbed over the rocks and the fallen rakkes before running as fast as they could up to the squad. Yimt’s soldiers were already reloading their muskets in preparation for another volley. Konowa looked behind him and saw they were in no immediate danger.

  “That’s enough. Let’s get back inside,” he said. “The regiment is still out there on the plain.”

  A touch on his arm made him look down.

  “Probably good for them to blow off a little steam,” Yimt said in a low voice. “With everything they’ve been through, I imagine it feels good to give a little back.”

  Konowa thought about that. They hadn’t just seen hell, they’d been battling their way through it from the very beginning. So many good men had fallen. There were wives who would never see their husbands again, small children would grow up without ever knowing their father, and mothers who would grieve for their son for the rest of their lives.

  He studied the faces of the soldiers. They were gaunt, their skin chalky white with cold, and their eyes red-rimmed. These were men who had to look over their shoulders to see where they had passed their breaking point, and still they were ready to stand and fight.

  Konowa knew time wasn’t in their favor, but to hell with that. “Good shooting, men. A few more volleys should keep them out of our hair for a while. On your own time, tear those bastards a new one.”

  There were smiles and grunts of approval as the soldiers continued reloading their muskets. The sound of ramrods rattling down barrels as his soldiers tamped down lead ball and black powder was music to his ears. This was the release they’d been longing for. Finally, and at least for the time being, they had the upper hand.

  More rakkes appeared and clambered up the rocks to be met with a withering rain of lead shot. The soldiers began cheering and calling out to each other as they picked apart the charging rakkes.

  The sharp vibration in his chest as the muskets spit out their lead balls put a grin on Konowa’s face. The rotten-egg smell of the smoke filled his nostrils. He tasted the bitter powder on his tongue and the constant ringing in his ears kicked up an octave.

  The rakkes fell by the dozen, but there seemed to be two more ready to take the place of every one that died. The cheering fell away, and soon the joy of exacting an ounce of revenge became a grim task as wave after wave of screaming, roaring predators climbed over the rocks to get them.

  “Major,” Yimt said, “they aren’t going to stop.”

  Konowa shook his head in disbelief. The beasts just kept coming. He’d once thought the walls of the fort would be easily defended, but with an enemy like this nothing was safe.

  “RSM, get these men inside, now.”

  Yimt began barking orders and the soldiers started backing up, taking turns covering each other as they retreated to the safety of the fort. Konowa was the last to step inside, realizing that the fort wouldn’t be a safe haven at all. If they didn’t get out of it soon, it would be their tomb.

  I want everyone ready to move in ten minutes!” Konowa shouted as he emerged from the steps leading up to the fort’s main square. Passing through the torture chamber again had made his mood very grim. “Grab whatever you can carry and get by the front gate.”

  Musket fire sounded along the top of the wall’s forts as soldiers shot down at the massing rakkes. Konowa knew it wouldn’t delay the beasts for long, but hopefully just long enough.

  “Major, you had better see this,” Pimmer said from the gate.

  Konowa trotted over. “How’s the battle going?”

  For an answer, the Viceroy pointed down to the plain below. A single soldier was marching into the open and straight for the whirling madness that had once been Faltinald Gwyn. Frost fire blazed all around the soldier, creating a barrier that no rakke dared approach.

  “That’s got to be Renwar,” Konowa said.

  Yimt appeared at Konowa’s elbow. “I’d recognize that gimpy walk a mile away. What in the hell does he think he’s doing?”

  “He’s challenging Gywn again,” Konowa said, admiring the soldier’s courage. “I told you, Renwar already ripped him apart once before.”

  “But did that monster look like that the last time?” Yimt asked.

  Konowa didn’t answer. The creature moving toward Renwar looked like nothing so much as a whirling, black storm. Konowa could feel the malevolence of it from here.

  “Surely the shades of the dead will aid young Renwar,” Pimmer said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than several shadows flickered into being near the creature on the desert floor.

  But something about them was wrong.

  “Those aren’t the Darkly Departed,” Yimt said, starting forward. “Bloody hell. They’re shades of dead rakkes!”

  Hundreds of them appeared, emerging from the storm-whipped vortex and flying outward like shrapnel. They were met at once by the shades of the Iron Elves in massive explosions of black frost and ear-splitting cracks. The desert floor gleamed as it iced over. Shadows merged and fragmented in close-quarter combat. The air vibrated with screams and howls as huge chunks of darkness ripped open and then closed as the fighting between the dead escalated from this plane to the next.

  The living rakkes took the opportunity to descend on the Iron Elves, charging across the ice with wild abandon. Volley after volley of well-aimed musket fire scythed through their ranks. Limbs and heads flew through the air as the beasts were chopped apart by the lead shot. Blood droplets froze in the air and fell like red glass beads to roll around on the icy ground. Rakkes died by the dozens, but the beasts refused to retreat and launched fresh assaults over the bodies of their fallen.

  “You cagey bastard,” Konowa said, his fury rising as he focused on the swirling entity that had once been Viceroy Faltinald Gwyn.

  “We have to do something,” Yimt said, turning to look at Konowa. Konowa halted before he’d taken two steps toward the roadway leading down to the desert. His first reaction was to run all the way down there and wade into the beasts with nothing but his saber and his anger. He turned, and with an effort, sheathed his saber, allowing the frost fire to die out. Musket fire from the Iron Elves manning the fort’s walls was crackling like wet pine in a fire. Already, he could hear the shrieks and growls of the rakkes on the far side of the fort.

  “The fort is untenable, and the regiment is in trouble. We’re between a rock and an even harder rock. We need to be able to create some kind of diversion,” he said, frustrated that he couldn’t think of anything big enough that would pose a threat to the mass of rakkes attacking the regiment.

  “Your father’s a wizard and Miss Tekoy’s a witch,” Yimt said, though Konowa could tell by the tone of his voice he didn’t have much hope in that regard.

  Konowa kicked the stone wall of the fort with his boot.

  “Unless he’s stopped speaking squirrel I don’t think he’ll be much help, and Visyna is exhausted. Dam
n it! There has to be something else.” I was wrong to leave the regiment, Konowa realized, horrified that he might very well watch its destruction and not be able to do a bloody thing about it.

  “There’s nothing for it then,” Yimt said, standing to his full height and straightening his uniform. He clutched his drukar in his right hand and pointed toward the battle below. “We’ll just have to charge down there and take’em on head on.”

  Konowa looked at the dwarf. “That’s suicide and you know it.”

  “Aye, but it’s the best kind. Maybe we’ll buy them enough time to get away.”

  Konowa was already shaking his head even though he still had no better idea. “We’ll call that plan B. I still want something we can do that gives us at least a five percent chance of survival.”

  A small cough alerted Konowa to the presence of Pimmer. “Five percent you say?” he said, offering the two of them a smile he probably only brought out just before revealing the existence of the Calahrian Army outside the opposing diplomat’s capital city. “I think I have just the thing.”

  Alwyn felt the presence of the dead rakkes before he saw them. The shades of the dead creatures tore through the wall between this world and the next, staining the air around them with a toxic mix of mindless fear and ravenous hunger. The cries of the living soldiers sounded distant and muted compared to the reaction of the shades of the Iron Elves’ dead.

  They charged headlong into the dead creatures, meeting frenzy with the controlled violence of seasoned soldiers. The dead of the Iron Elves slashed and burned their way through the dead creatures, tearing their shadowy forms into fragments that shattered and bled darkness into the night. Frost fire sparked off them and burned holes in the ice on the ground, creating deep, black holes. Wails of absolute agony ebbed and flowed as the battle raged.

  Frost fire consumed rakke shades, eating their essence until nothing but disembodied screams of pain remained to echo in the night. The temperature continued to fall as death swept across the mortal plane. It beckoned to things dead and gone eons before rakkes ever walked the earth. Huge, multilegged creatures with spike-crusted claws scrambled into being, lunging and stabbing at the shades of the Iron Elves and forcing them to slowly retreat.

  The vortex around the creature continued to grow, its scouring winds tearing and scattering anything and everything they touched. It fed on the darkness, drawing ever more power as time disgorged dead after dead onto the field of battle. Each new creature was more twisted and broken than the last, its memory of what it was so fragmented that it could only piece together parts of what it had once been. What remained as strong as ever, however, was the rapacious need to feed, and these monsters of tentacle and spike, fang and barb, flew at the shades of the Iron Elves with abandon. The shades fell back, and Alwyn let them, knowing that not even they could withstand this force. There was only one way for this madness to stop.

  Alwyn took in a breath and breathed out frost fire.

  “I challenge you, Gwyn!” Alwyn shouted, and strode forth to meet the darkness head on.

  Konowa, this is madness,” Visyna said, standing at the front gate of the fort. Except the front gate wasn’t there anymore. The two large wooden doors had been ripped from their hinges and repurposed by Viceroy Alstonfar. “The Viceroy is a very creative man, but this is just lunacy.”

  Konowa couldn’t disagree, but he didn’t see what choice they had. He stepped aside as soldiers ran back and forth from inside the fort. They were scrambling to load as many supplies as would fit on the hastily constructed wooden contraption now resting on the top of the snow-covered roadway leading down to the desert floor. Armloads of anything and everything were being tossed onto the Viceroy’s invention, though Konowa thought a more apt description would be “disaster waiting to happen.” In this regard, he and Visyna agreed, but he couldn’t let her know that.

  “Careful, Major, coming through,” a soldier said, tottering under the weight of a large wooden cask. Anything of possible value, especially foodstuffs, were being hurriedly bundled and loaded as RSM Arkhorn barked orders that would sound more at home in a grocer’s shop: “Try to find a bag of flour with a few less rat droppings in it! Don’t go mixing the tins of boot polish with the tins of jam. Some of us will be wanting toast later, and if I open the wrong tin in the dark guess who’ll be eating every bite!”

  The crackle of a musket volley drifted up from the desert floor below, adding urgency to the loading. It was a clear reminder that living men were down there among all the shades. Smoke from volley after volley mixed with flashes of light and bursts of frost fire were making it difficult to see what was going on. The urge to charge down there rose up in Konowa again and he fought it by pacing. He looked down at the plain again. The Iron Elves with the Darkly Departed and Private Renwar would have to hold off Gwyn and his monsters for a little longer.

  Konowa tore himself away from the view and faced Visyna. “It’s our only option,” he said, looking at the toboggan and wishing it wasn’t. While Konowa had been outside the fort bringing Visyna and her group inside, Pimmer had been hard at work crafting what was little more than thirty feet of sled with a bow made of wood planking, and everything nailed and banded together with cobbler’s supplies. It did not fill Konowa with confidence, but there really was no more time. More musket fire and a rising gibbering howl of maddened rakkes emphasized his point.

  “I know it is,” Visyna said, leaning forward and giving him a quick kiss on the lips. The frost fire stung, but he thought he could get used to that.

  “All aboard who’s going aboard,” Pimmer shouted.

  Konowa turned. His mother was placing his father and Tyul onto the toboggan and getting them settled in. His father was still not talking. Konowa knew it was risky, but he hoped that thrusting the elf into the heart of a battle would snap him out of it. They were going to need him.

  Pimmer ran past to direct a soldier where to put some sacks then hurried over to Konowa. “We’re just about ready, Major. I think you can call the soldiers down from the wall.”

  Konowa heard their musket fire and shook his head. “Not until the very last moment.”

  “We are rapidly approaching that moment,” he said. “Once The Flying Elf starts sliding, there’ll be no stopping her.”

  Konowa brought his right hand up to his ear and rubbed a knuckle in it. “The Flying Elf?”

  “HMT The Flying Elf, actually.” When Konowa didn’t respond, Pimmer elaborated. “Her Majesty’s Toboggan, of course.”

  “Of course. And the name?”

  Pimmer’s smile lessened a little. “A bit cheeky, I know, but after I relayed your experiences with the flying sarka har, Miss Tekoy insisted.”

  “And can you steer this . . . elf?

  Pimmer’s face clouded. “All I had time for was the basic design. We’ll just push it down the slope until it starts to move then hop on and hold tight. Our great luck in this is that the road leading down to the desert floor runs straight with a three-foot wall on either side, creating a nice, deep furrow. Now that it’s filled with snow we should stay well centered all the way down. I am a little concerned about the angle of transition between the road and the desert when we reach the bottom. There appears to be a large snowbank down there, but I think we’ll manage with a fairly gradual transition.”

  Konowa looked down to the bottom. “More ice than snow I’d say.”

  “Best not to think about it too much,” Pimmer offered.

  Konowa agreed. “Right. We’re going now.” He looked around and spotted Yimt waving his drukar in the air as he spurred the men on. “RSM! Get the men formed up and make sure we have everyone. We’re not coming back. I want this sl—this toboggan moving in one minute.”

  “Corporal Feylan!” Yimt shouted, pointing at the young soldier with his drukar. “I want everyone right here in thirty seconds. Get the men down from the walls, now. Any dawdlers will have the honor of welcoming the rakkes to this place. In light of what happened arou
nd here, I imagine death will be almost instantaneous.”

  “Yes, RSM, right away,” Feylan said, running off to round up the soldiers still inside the fort.

  “So whose butt did he kiss to make corporal?” Zwitty asked, walking up with a single loaf of moldy bread in his hand.

  “Corporals and higher sit at the front of this device. Want a promotion?” Yimt asked.

  “Just asking,” Zwitty said, scurrying away to place his loaf of bread on the pile then jumping on well away from the front.

  “Shame he didn’t dawdle,” Yimt said, watching the soldier the whole time.

  A musket fired from inside the fort. Privates Vulhber, Erinmoss, and Inkermon came running. “It’s the rakkes, sir! They’re climbing over the walls!”

  Bloodcurdling roars echoed inside the fort as the beasts vaulted over the top and descended into the yard. A couple of muskets fired, dropping one rakke where it twitched and growled in agony, and taking off the left arm of another at the elbow.

  “Do we have everyone?” Konowa shouted.

  “All accounted for, Major,” Feylan said.

  “Good. RSM, get this toboggan moving!”

  “All right, laddies . . . and ladies,” Yimt said, grabbing hold of a wooden crate roped onto the toboggan. “Start pushing!”

  A collective groan went up as backs bent to the task. Konowa tried to do the mental calculation of how heavy this toboggan with all its supplies and passengers was and came up with bloody damn heavy.

  “It’s not moving!” someone shouted.

  More rakkes poured over the wall and started bounding across the fort’s small yard. A single musket fired in response. If a rakke went down Konowa couldn’t see it in the mass of furry beasts closing in on them.