The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “Cer Falyn, spread the word. The king will be addressing his men.” Without waiting for an answer, Shona took Eroh by the hand and strode toward the stairs that led to the ramparts.

  Pushing away from the wall, Josen hurried after her, and the swamplings followed—Azra still didn’t like to let him stray far from her sight when she could help it. His retinue of guards and heralds took up the rear in an orderly file.

  From the top of the stairs, Josen could see the sun in the far west, just beginning to set. The sky there was a band of brilliant orange spanning the horizon, fading to pale pink and finally to a blue that deepened and darkened as it made its way east. Not much light left. Best make this quick.

  The men along the wall saluted and bowed as he passed, and though he wished they wouldn’t, Josen made sure to spare a smile and nod for each of them. He tried to hold his back straight and his shoulders square, to keep his head up and his eyes confident. These men were here because of him, and if they were going to keep their nerve, they needed to see that he could keep his. It was all he had to offer them, really. They deserved the leader they thought he was—one who wasn’t fighting the urge to run and hide. Pretending was the least he could do.

  Ahead of him, Shona stopped near the center of the wall; Josen and the swamplings joined her there. Josen’s train of knights moved into formation around them, making a wall between their king and the men on watch along the ramparts. A pair of heralds moved to either side of him, hands on the horns at their belts.

  Below, fires burned along the crowded road—spots of flickering orange throwing dim light over hundreds of men. Already many of them were looking up at him; Morne had spread the word quickly. He doubted his voice would carry so far up the mountain, but the closest ones would hear, and they would share what they’d heard.

  Which raised an important question. “What do I tell them?”

  “Remind them why they believe in you,” Shona said. “Let them know that Castar has allied himself with dark forces, but don’t let them forget that you have Eroh. They want to believe that the Sky God chose you, they just need to remember why. And try to end on an inspiring note. You’re good at that.” Placing a hand against Eroh’s back, she nudged him to Josen’s side.

  Josen offered the boy a smile. “Well, Eroh,” he said. “What do you think? Shall we give them a show?” He reached out his hand.

  Eroh took it, but glanced at Azra; she showed him a quick sign, and he gave a single solemn nod. “It’s what Zerill wants,” he said, and he signalled to Goldeyes with a flick of his hand. The little eagle came to roost on a nearby merlon, and then hopped to the boy’s shoulder.

  “I hope so,” said Josen, and gave Shona a nod of his own. “I’m ready.”

  Shona motioned to the heralds, and both men sounded Aryllia’s fanfare in unison, near deafening in Josen’s ears from so near. If any of the soldiers below hadn’t been looking already, they would be now.

  Josen cleared his throat, just to stretch out the time before he had to speak. He didn’t want to do this. Not because he wasn’t good at it—talking to people was the one part of being king he knew how to do. He was fairly confident that he could give a speech that would convince these men to fight—and probably die—against a threat they didn’t understand. When he opened his mouth, the words would come, like they always did, and very soon he would start to like the way they felt on his tongue. The rapt attention they earned from his audience. The reverence of it.

  That was what he hated. The part where he started to like it.

  Rudol had been right about him, on that count. It was the responsibility of the crown he’d run away from, not the admiration that came with it. He’d always liked being admired. Being the hero. And he’d always hated knowing that about himself.

  But this is different. It has to be. Even Shona said so. This wasn’t some game he was playing, some new conquest to chase. This was for Greenwall, and the swamplings, and the future of the Nine Peaks. It had to be done. Or at least, it made him feel better to tell himself so. Either way, there’s no more time to waste. I’m losing the light.

  So Josen breathed in deep, and with every ounce of air in his lungs, he cried, “Soldiers of the Plateaus, do not lose hope!” His voice rang off the walls of the pass, and in the depth of that rolling echo, even he could have mistaken it for the voice of a king. “I know you fear what you have seen and heard today, but never doubt the justice of our cause! We fight in the name of Aryllia, for the city she carved from the very stone of this mountain, and for our families who call it their home!” He raised his hand, with Eroh’s still clasped tightly in it. “And the last Windwalker stands with us!”

  From below, the men answered.

  “The last Windwalker stands with us!”

  “Praise the Lord of Eagles!”

  And rising strong and clear above the rest, “Josen lives!”

  There it is. He could feel the fire growing in his chest, burning away the cold pain of his ruined side. Burning away the doubt and the fear. He’d hate himself for this later, but in the moment, with the sound of their faith rushing by his ears, he could almost forget how much he didn’t want to be there.

  And the words kept coming—the words he knew they had to hear. Whether he believed them didn’t matter very much, just then.

  “Some of you think you saw a miracle today, when the traitor Lenoden Castar was spared from our quarrels by an invisible force. That was no miracle! Castar uses dark magicks to seek his victory! He keeps by his side a man who knows the craft of the Deepwalker, powers outlawed by the Nine Peaks and swamplings alike. That is the power that saved him today! A power not from the Above, but from below!”

  No cries of support at that, only furtive glances and troubled whispers. It didn’t bother Josen; he was far from done. The part of him that revelled in this understood instinctively that an ebb here was necessary, to make the final rise that much more triumphant.

  “But a far greater power than any Castar can touch watches over us, and if you need a miracle to prove it, look no further than this boy who stands beside me!” Again, he raised Eroh’s hand high. It was time for the crescendo, and Josen was as eager for it now as the men below. “Let the Spirit of All give our arms strength and our hearts courage! Let the Wind of Grace guide our swords and carry our quarrels home! Let the Lord of Eagles light our way to victory! We have nothing to fear from the darkness—”

  He never finished; his words were made a lie by a single watchman’s voice.

  “Deeplings! Deeplings on the road!”

  A moment later, horns began to sound all along the wall.

  Josen released Eroh’s hand and whirled on his heel. The warmth in his breast died with his speech; a very familiar dread rose in its place. “That can’t be right. They never come here.” He couldn’t remember a single Deepling attack in his lifetime. Even the lowest point of the farming flats was higher above the mist than they liked to range, and there was little to tempt their appetites farther down.

  He moved to the outside edge of the wall in a sudden rush; his guardsmen parted to let him by, and fell in behind.

  There, emerging from the mist-line as the last glimmer of sunlight sank below the horizon, he saw them. Monsters creeping out of the dark. It was too far and too dim now to make out individual creatures, but the things he was looking at could never be mistaken for human. They had too many limbs or too few, bodies too large or too small; they moved with the undulating rhythm of insects.

  “He wouldn’t,” Josen said. His throat was dry. “Not this. Not even him.”

  Shona was beside him; he hadn’t noticed her there until she spoke. “Wouldn’t he?” She glanced at Verik, who stood beside her with Azra and Eroh.

  “Someone did,” said Verik. “Is not… natural.” He watched the Deeplings move up the road for a moment. “So many. Too many.”

  He was right. In the fading dusklight it was impossible to count, but by the sheer mass of shadows moving up the road, the
re were as many as had ever attacked a duchy at once. Close to a hundred already, if Josen had to guess, and more were emerging from the mist every moment.

  Verik frowned, and his eyes found Josen’s. “To call so many, would take—”

  “Windwalker blood,” Josen finished for him. He remembered that day in the Swamp: a drop of his blood given in sacrifice, and more Deeplings than Verik could control. “More than a drop, this time.”

  And then he understood exactly what that meant.

  The Falloways claimed descent from Carris of the Fields. Distantly and far removed, but the link was there.

  Shona had gotten there before he had; he could already see it on her face. “He’s dead, then.” Her voice was strangely calm, like she’d already known. And he supposed she had—she’d said as much, even before she’d had any way to confirm it. “My father’s blood called these things.”

  Josen reached for her arm. “Shona, I—”

  She pulled away. “Not now. Now we find a way to stop them.” She pointed at the nearest man with a horn in hand. “Signal the knight-commander. I want him up here.”

  “No need, Lady Shona.” Cer Falyn’s voice came from the top of the stairway; Knight-Commander Farrel was just behind her.

  Farrel was shouting orders already, though he hadn’t seen the danger yet. “Hold your positions, and do not fear! The Sky God protects us!” His face was red behind his long mustache; he must have run to answer the alarm. “Deeplings, is it?” he asked in a lower voice as he approached. “They haven’t attacked the Plateaus in decades.” His breath caught as he leaned over the wall’s edge to see. “Lord of Eagles, I… I’ve never seen so many.”

  “We don’t have time for surprise, Cer Farrel,” said Shona. “I need solutions. How do we fight them?”

  Farrel, to his credit, didn’t take more than a moment to clear his throat and gather himself. “The thunderbolts and wingbows are the first line. Deeplings don’t like light—we’ll want to set the bolts aflame, which means we need pitch and cloth. We were prepared to fight men, not—”

  “We’ll get you whatever you need,” said Shona. “What else?”

  “More pitch than just what the quarrels will take,” said Cer Falyn. “We can dump it over the wall, or throw burning barrels down on them. And wood, for bonfires. The more light, the better. These things only come out after dusk. We need to turn it into day.”

  They went on from there, speaking of formations, of when and where the men behind the gate might be used, of what supplies they needed.

  Josen was hardly listening.

  All he could hear was the panic in the voices of the men around him; all he could see was the dark tide rolling up the mountain. It wouldn’t be long before it crashed against the wall. There had to be hundreds of them, and they were still coming. Even from this distance, he could feel that tug of dark longing somewhere deep inside him—weak now, but it would grow.

  One beetleback can kill a dozen men in close quarters, and there might be hundreds of them down there. We’re not mounting a defense, we’re waiting to be massacred. He’d seen what the Deeplings had done to the Greenwall, and it had been erected by Highcraft when the Windwalkers still lived. This was just a wall, made by the hands of men. How could it hope to stand against so many? And no one was coming to help. It would be days yet before a force from the Wolfshead could reach the Plateaus—if Duke Theo would even send aid to the man who had taken the throne from his son-in-law—and longer still from Whitelake.

  They wouldn’t last days. He wasn’t sure they’d last hours.

  We can’t win. It’s over.

  He felt a hand take his and looked down to see Eroh standing at his side. Goldeyes still perched on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” Eroh said with utter sincerity. He looked up with serene golden eyes, an island of calm amid the terror that threatened to sweep Josen away. “Zerill will bring help.”

  “I… don’t know if we can wait that long, Eroh.” Josen kept to himself the voice in his head that whispered, I don’t know if she’s coming at all. He believed she would if she could; he believed she would do everything in her power to make that happen. He just couldn’t imagine that her people would allow it, let alone send enough warriors to be any help.

  “I think we can,” Eroh said simply, and there was a knife in his hand. Zerill’s. Josen recognized it at once, a double-edged blade of grey-blue slate melded to a wooden hilt. The boy gripped it in both hands like he was wielding the sword of Bannon Thunderblade. “I’ll help. And so will Goldeyes.”

  Josen glanced at the eagle on Eroh’s shoulder for a moment; the bird stared back with golden hunter’s eyes, and cocked his head.

  And then Josen remembered something he’d all but forgotten.

  “Spirit of All, I’m an idiot! Thank you Eroh!” Grinning, he picked the boy up under the arms and half spun him as he whirled to face Shona. Startled, Goldeyes took flight, though he made no sound. “The birds, Shona!”

  Shona looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “What birds?”

  Josen lowered Eroh to the ground and ruffled his hair enthusiastically. “From the Eyrie! When Zerill fought that rotborn in the Swamp, it froze when Goldeyes screeched at it. It could work again!”

  Now understanding washed over her face. “The sound. In the stories, the true eagles hunted Deeplings from the skies. Maybe they remember the sound.”

  “Yes! And the Eyrie has dozens of birds! The eagles for certain, but the falcons might work too. I can go—”

  “No,” said Shona. “I will. You have to be here. The men need to see you standing with them. And there are other things we need—you’d be useless at organizing the transport and supplies.”

  That was true enough. He didn’t have the first idea who to talk to about getting wagons, or barrels of pitch, or cauldrons to heat it in. “If you think it’s best. But I thought… you said you wanted to stay.”

  “I don’t care where I am, as long as I’m not hiding.” Shona’s jaw clenched firmly. “This helps stop Castar, and it’s something I know how to do. I’m going.”

  “Then go,” said Josen. “I think Chastor Ren will see it done if he knows I sent you, but the Convocation can be strange about its birds. I’d send you with my seal or something, but…” He spread his hands. “If I have one, it’s probably at the Keep.”

  “I have a better idea.” Shona extended a hand to Eroh. “Will you come with me, Eroh? A Windwalker’s eyes will help motivate anyone who might object.”

  Eroh hesitated, still holding Zerill’s knife. Again, he looked to Azra; she smiled fondly and signed something to him, then tipped her head at Josen. “She says I should go where it’s safe, but she has to stay,” Eroh said. “I… I want to stay too. I want to help.”

  “You can help most by going,” Josen said, and gently pushed a hand against the boy’s back. “Bring us those birds. You’ll do more good there than you will here.” He didn’t know if that was true, but he didn’t much care. He’s a child. He shouldn’t have to see what’s about to happen.

  Eroh cocked his head, as if he could tell what Josen was thinking. “If I go… You have to promise me I can come back. I want to be here when Zerill comes.”

  Josen found Shona’s eyes over the boy’s head; he could tell by the look he saw there that she didn’t put much hope in a swampling rescue either. But what she said was, “I promise. I know what it’s like to be kept out of harm’s way when all you want is to help. I won’t do that to you.”

  Josen couldn’t tell if she meant it, or if she’d just decided—like he had—that it was easier to lie, but true or not, Eroh believed her. He put away his knife, and took Shona’s hand. “Goldeyes will stay, then. He can help until we come back with more.” He murmured something to the little eagle, and Goldeyes hopped silently from his shoulder to take roost on the battlements.

  “Be careful, Josen,” Shona said. “If it looks like they might get by the wall, fall back to the next gate and let
the men cover your retreat. They need you near, not dead. If you get yourself killed, Castar wins. Don’t play at being a hero.”

  “I won’t,” said Josen. It was a promise he wished he’d found harder to make. People were going to die protecting him from those things; he didn’t want to be so eager to let them. But he’d never been a hero. He’d only ever tried to look like one.

  If Shona had more to say, she didn’t get the chance. A cry came from behind, and Josen turned in time to see a man pitching over the edge of the wall. The soldiers on either side stood frozen; they made no move to stop as he fell, just stared down the road.

  Josen didn’t for a moment doubt why it had happened. He understood. Because somewhere inside, that dark, sick longing was still growing; had been the whole time he’d been speaking to Shona. And the wingbowmen were soldiers, not knights—they hadn’t been trained to resist that voice.

  He threw himself over.

  He threw himself to them.

  They were nearly at the gate. Deeplings swarmed around the last switchback, close enough now that Josen could make out their shapes even in the dark: the curved razors of a beetleback’s arms, the quivering bulk of a grubling, the twisted bodies and piecemeal limbs of endless rotborn. Patchwork creatures from the deepest places below the earth spilled into the pass, swarming up the road and along the sheer rock walls on skittering insect legs. And not one of them made a sound. Despite their numbers, they moved in complete silence.

  “Stand fast!” Cer Farrel bellowed. “Watch over each other! Not another man moves toward the edge! We hold until they’re in range!” The strength of his voice seemed to pull most of the men out of their daze.

  But not all. Along the wall, a half-dozen men threw themselves over before anyone could stop them.

  And Josen wasn’t far behind. Without noticing, he’d taken several steps closer to the edge. He willed himself to a halt and pushed his fingers through his hair until they struck Aryllia’s Crown. Cold sweat smeared against his palm.

  He wanted to keep going. Even while the part of him that could think and reason railed against it, a voice inside urged him on, and he badly wanted to obey. That was the worst thing: wanting it, no matter how much he didn’t.