The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  The boy. They fight for him. And then, with the first true awe he’d experienced since he’d grown out of worshipping his older brother: He is who they say he is. He’s real. The eagles reached the front line, following their little general, and behind them came all the rest, more birds than Rudol could count. They dived low, and their voices joined together in one great, piercing cry. Like the sound of the true eagles come again.

  All the way back to the Eyewall, the Deeplings came to a spasmodic halt, their bodies seized in the grip of some ancient terror. Not for just a brief instant, like the beetleback before, but for much longer. Just then, to Rudol, it seemed like an eternity.

  The creatures behind kept pushing forward through the gate, colliding with the unmoving mass in front. In their frenzy to reach the meal they’d come for, the larger ones trampled over the smaller; the smaller swarmed overtop until the larger fell under their weight. A beetleback swung its black blades to cut down the paralyzed rotborn in front of it; throughout the horde, others resorted to the same heedless slaughter. These were monsters, not soldiers, and now their single-minded hunger had turned against them.

  Rudol realized that he’d stopped falling back, and he wasn’t the only one. All around him, men stood watching the sky. Something more powerful than fear had taken hold of them; he could feel it, just as he could feel that retreating now would be a waste of a miracle. With the strength of eagles behind their swords, they could hold the pass—for a time, at least. They could buy the men at the Queenswall a few precious hours toward sunrise.

  They could still stop what he’d started.

  If I must die today, Rudol thought, let it be for that.

  Once more, the birds swept over the pass, and their screams stopped more of the creatures in their tracks. The chaos among the Deeplings grew—but those first staggered by the sound were moving again now, and this time it only halted them for a moment. It was as if they’d expected something else behind those cries, and each time it didn’t come, some of their fear drained away.

  “We’re going to miss our chance,” Rudol said aloud. But nobody moved, and still nobody was rallying the men to attack. Either there was no one left, just like on the wall above, or they were all frozen by the same wonder that held him still.

  Once more, it would have to be him.

  “With me!” he roared, and held his sword high. “We strike now! For the last Windwalker! For the Lord of Eagles!”

  As if they’d been waiting for his command, a hundred voices and more rose to answer. “The last Windwalker! The Lord of Eagles!” A hundred weapons and more lifted toward the sky.

  With the cries of men and eagles ringing in his ears, Rudol Aryllia gripped his sword in both hands, whispered a prayer to his god, and charged.

  46. Balancing the Scales

  Josen

  Ignoring the spasms of pain along his side, Josen helped lift a bolt as long as a spear into place on the thunderbolt’s body. When the bolt fell into the groove at the huge wingbow’s center, he heaved a sigh of relief. He’d ordered his guardsmen to help with the defense as men died and numbers dwindled, but this sort of labor made him wish he’d kept some of the stronger ones nearby.

  The man he was helping—lanky and balding, wearing the twilight blue of the Plateaus’ standing army—must have heard, even over the sounds of battle and the cries of the birds flying above, because he said, “Rest a whit, Yer Majesty. I c’n wind it, until the it’s too tight.”

  Josen thought about protesting, but the pain in his side made the decision for him. “Thank you… Soren, was it?”

  Soren smiled, as if it was some kind of honor that Josen had so much as remembered his name. “That’s it. And I should be thankin’ you, Majesty. Fer helpin’ like this.”

  Josen shook his head. “No need for that. I promise you, I’m doing much less than any one of you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Majesty,” Soren said as he bent to wind the wheel at the thunderbolt’s side. “Folk always said you cared more’n the rest of the Eagles, and seein’ you here with us, I believe it. It’s more than some’d do.”

  Josen started to protest, but the words were swallowed by noise as the wooden wings began to creak under growing tension. When there was too much resistance for one man, Josen took one of the wheel’s arms; together, they managed to draw the cord fully back and hook it into place, ready to launch.

  Soren swivelled the thunderbolt on its mount, took aim at one of the Deeplings swarming along the switchback road below, and pulled the lever to let the huge bolt loose. It flew true, shattering a beetleback’s chitin chestplate and piercing through to the massive shelled body behind.

  “One more down,” Josen said, and clapped Soren on the shoulder.

  “Much good as that does,” said Soren, and then his eyes widened as if he was surprised to hear himself say it. “Sorry, Majesty. Didn’t mean t’ go against—”

  Josen interrupted with a raised hand. “Don’t apologize, Soren,” he said. “You don’t have to watch your tongue around me.” He’d seen the look on Soren’s face too many times since he’d started wearing Aryllia’s Crown—the look of someone realizing they’d spoken too freely in front of a powerful man. He hated it. It made him feel like a king. Still, though, he preferred that treatment to the other one—the low mutters when he passed, whispers of “traitor”, and “dark-eye lover” and “swampling king”. Only from a small few, but enough that he’d noticed.

  Soren nodded, but he still looked wary. “It’s only that… there always seem t’be more of ‘em.”

  “You aren’t wrong. But they can’t keep on forever. Not long until sunrise now.”

  Soren glanced hopefully skyward, and nodded his head. “I reckon it is gettin’ lighter,” he said. “Might be we’ll outlast ‘em yet.”

  With that, he bent to grab another huge bolt from the stack at the foot of the thunderbolt. Groaning inwardly, Josen moved to help.

  Before he’d even bent down, a passing squire stepped in. “Let me, Your Majesty.”

  Relieved, Josen offered the young man a grateful nod. “Thank you,” he said. “I’d argue, but I’m not sure I could lift another of those.” It wasn’t a lie. These last hours, he’d done his best to stay useful, and while his best wasn’t all that much, it was exhausting.

  They seemed to have the task well in hand, so Josen moved on. He’d only gone a few unsteady steps along the wall, though, before his weary legs started to tremble. He gripped the nearest merlon to stop himself from collapsing, and took a moment to catch his breath.

  Craning his neck back, he looked to the sky. Smoke filled the air, rising from the bonfires, and through it the occasional silhouette of one bird or another flashed by overhead, crying predatory cries. They’ve done their job, at least. Every once in a while, I manage a half-decent idea. It was hard to say through the haze and the ambient glow of the fires, but the moon was very low, and he wanted to believe the sky was lighter than it had been, if only by a little bit. Despite what he’d said to Soren, he didn’t actually have much idea how near sunrise was, only that it had to be getting closer. Just by his own exhaustion, he felt like he’d been awake long enough.

  Although by that measure, we might have been fighting for days. He’d never been good at judging time, really—Rudol could do it with a glance at the sky, but Josen had never gotten the knack. All he knew for certain was that he’d gone without sleep for hours longer than he should have. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands over his face.

  “Your Majesty!”

  Someone grabbed his shoulder and yanked him away from the edge; an involuntary cry pushed its way out of Josen’s mouth, and his heart seized so painfully he almost thought it had burst. He leapt back several steps before he even opened his eyes.

  He never saw what the thing was, or the face of the knight who’d saved him. Just a shadow at the edge of the wall, a grey tabard, and the back of a steel helm. As the monster fell, it lashed out with a blade or a claw, and the kn
ight’s lower jaw parted from his head and spun wildly through the air. A spray of blood spattered Josen’s face. With a choking sound, the man pitched forward and plummeted over the wall.

  The Deepling had no voice to scream, but it struck the ground with a great crunch—like the sound of an insect under a bootheel, only a hundred times louder. The knight made no sound at all.

  Josen couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but stand and stare at the spot where the man had fallen. It wasn’t the first time that night he’d watched a Deepling pull someone down into ripping claws and razor teeth, but this was different.

  This man had died saving him.

  How long he stood there, he didn’t know, but eventually a hand on his wrist pulled him back to the world. Dazed, he turned to see Falyn Morne.

  An expression somewhere between pity and annoyance moved across her face, and she wiped at his cheek with her glove. It came away with a red stain on the palm. “You can’t stand so near the edge, Your Majesty,” she said, stern but gentle, like she was scolding a foolish child. “It isn’t safe.”

  And the horrible thing was that he knew that. A man shouldn’t have had to die to teach him the lesson. He was just so tired that he’d forgotten where he was, what he was doing. A few hours ago he would have said that was impossible, but now he knew better. Now he knew that at a certain point, weariness overpowered just about everything else. Even fear.

  Weakly, he tried to stammer an explanation. “I—I’m sorry, I wasn’t…”

  But Morne had seen something else that required her attention, and she was already moving on. “You should join the reserves, get some rest,” she said over her shoulder, and then she was shouting orders at the next thunderbolt down the wall.

  Josen suddenly felt very alone and very vulnerable; he badly wanted to follow her. Instead, he let her go. She had command of the defenses now that Knight-Commander Farrel was gone, and the worst thing he could do would be to get in her way. She has more important things to do than coddle an idiot. Her and all the rest of them.

  He staggered to the far side of the battlements, overlooking the farming flats. Broad shelves of land and narrow stair-like terraces climbed the mountain toward the city above, ripe with the verdant growth of early summer, scattered with colorful mills turning slowly in the wind. A lovely view, even in the moonlight, but right now it was hard to appreciate—the eight hundred soldiers encamped throughout the lower flats rather spoiled the idyllic scene. Morne had chosen to hold back four companies of two hundred each: one rotating with the defenders at regular intervals to give those who needed it the opportunity to eat and rest, and three more in reserve so that some of their force would be fresh when Castar’s army arrived. Tents and wagons covered every open space that wasn’t already taken up by ranks of men, and all across the fields, dozens of fires burned against the night.

  Josen slumped against the crenellations, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head, the dull pulse of blood in his ears. Putting his back against the stone, he slid down until he was sitting with his legs bent and his arms braced against his knees. By the light of the bonfires, he surveyed the wall and the men fighting to hold the Queensgate.

  His men. Fighting—and dying—in the name of their king.

  Under Falyn Morne’s command, a motley band of knights and squires and army men and militia brought swords and halberds and wingbows to bear against whatever monsters tried to gain a foothold on the battlements. Some had even dipped their weapons in pitch and lit them aflame to frighten the Deeplings—Josen didn’t know where the idea had come from, but it was clever, and it seemed to work.

  He wanted to believe in them. To believe that they could last here until sunrise; that the wall could hold. The Queensgate was sturdier than the two before it, a forty-foot-high wall erected by Aryllia herself before the Highcraft had been lost. There was no demarcation between the wall and the cliff, nor any discernable flaw in its construction; the unblemished grey stone might have been sculpted out of the mountainside like clay. It rose seamlessly from the sheer edge of the farming flats’ lowest plateau, spanning the mouth of the road and several hundred yards of cliff-face on either side. At the very center, where the road met the flats, a pair of great oaken doors reinforced with steel stood closed and barred, with an iron portcullis in front and behind. Strong enough to stand against any siege.

  Except maybe this one.

  Josen felt like a traitor for admitting that, even just to himself, but he had seen the Deeplings cut through the steel and stone and oak of two gates already. There were fewer of the monsters than there had been, and they were weaker so high above the mist, but he thought there had to be more than a hundred left—enough to do the same here given the chance. And they were growing resistant to the eagle’s cries. They still flinched at the sound, but it didn’t slow them down for long. All that remained between them and the wall was a ragged line of knights and army men only a few hundred strong themselves, and it wouldn’t be long before even that small force broke entirely. After that, Josen didn’t have much confidence that the Queensgate would hold for long, no matter how sturdy it was.

  But somehow the men hadn’t broken yet. Somehow, even with their backs nearly pressed against the wall, they fought on. With the help of the birds from the eyrie and the training of the Storm Knights, they’d held for hours after the fall of the Eyewall, giving up ground only by inches at a time. That stubborn refusal to surrender was unfathomable to Josen, but it was the only reason that the Queensgate had any hope at all of standing through to sunrise.

  He just didn’t think it was a particularly strong hope.

  This wasn’t the clean, heroic sort of stand he had read about in stories. It was messy, and costly, and terrible. He’d seen too many things that he wished he hadn’t during these last hours: wingbowmen yanked off the wall into razored maws; knights cut cleanly in half by dark blades even through their mail; men sprayed with Deepling ichor, fighting on even as black madness and death wormed its way into their wounds and beneath their flesh. A dead man’s blood was still drying on the side of his face. Spirit of All, it’s too much. I’m not made for this.

  “There! Look!” A commotion down the wall drew Josen’s attention—a number of men were looking at something, pointing north along the edge of the farming flats. “They’re going up the cliffs!” someone shouted.

  Josen pushed himself to his feet and looked where so many hands were pointing.

  No.

  Deeplings were crawling up the cliffs into the farming flats.

  The creatures had pushed far enough up the road that it was only a short climb to the lowest plateau, and perhaps a dozen beetlebacks and grublings and rotborn with clinging insect limbs were scuttling up the sheer cliffs and around the wall to reach the farmland beyond. Their grip was less sure this far above the mist—many lost their purchase and plummeted from the mountain, legs snapping at empty air—but the most sure-footed of them made it, and that was enough. Dark forms were already marauding through the fields, carving through the walls of old windmills, tearing up soil and slicing down stalks of maize and grain.

  Even if we turn them back this instant, people will still starve come winter. On a good year, it was a struggle to feed all nine duchies from what little arable land existed in the mountains. With Greenwall in Castar’s hands and the farming flats despoiled by Deeplings, it wasn’t going to be a good year.

  “Signal the reserves!” shouted Cer Falyn. “Someone has to defend the fields!” At her command, a horn sounded a string of short and long blasts, and the soldiers encamped behind the Queensgate began to move into position along the edge of the flats.

  Which left no reinforcements for the men holding the wall.

  And they knew it. Josen could see it in their eyes, and the way they held their shoulders: resignation. They knew no help was coming. They fought on, knowing that the only chance for reprieve was to survive until the sun rose above the Godspire.

  How an
y of them were still standing, Josen didn’t know. All through the night they’d held against a foe that needed no rest and gave no quarter, and still, somehow, they fought on to protect their home. Josen hadn’t even had to draw his sword yet, and he could hardly keep his feet under him. I can’t even help for a moment without needing someone to pull me out of harm’s way. That isn’t enough. They deserve a king who can act like one.

  He drew his witch-saber and lifted it overhead. “We will survive this!” he cried, as loudly as his damaged chest allowed. He had no idea how true it was, but it sounded encouraging. “The sun is coming! They will flee under the Sky God’s eye!”

  Only a few scattered cries answered him—“Praise the Above!” and the like—and whether the men took much heart from his words, he couldn’t tell. He was there to inspire them, supposedly, but with nightmares crawling up the cliffs, he doubted very much that anyone found solace from a man in a crown shouting empty encouragement.

  Then I have to do better. Something more than just standing here trying to look regal. If I can even do that without getting someone else killed. The man at the thunderbolt—Soren, he reminded himself—had responded to his help with something like awe, as if it somehow mattered more to see a king put his shoulder to some menial task than anyone else. It wasn’t a reaction Josen liked very much, but if it made any difference at all, he supposed that he could live with it.

  For as long as living is still an option, at least.

  He put away his sword, and looked around for somewhere else he could be of use.

  Near the mid-point of the wall, Verik knelt with his hands against the stone, using his deepcraft to strengthen the wall against Deepling claws. Eroh stood beside him, looking up at the birds that swooped and screamed overhead—Shona had brought him back, as she’d promised, before leaving again herself to oversee the supplies. Not far from the others, Azra was struggling to lift one of the few remaining pitch barrels without aid. Josen didn’t think she’d find his presence very inspiring, but that was something he could help with, at least. No one else was likely to—the men of the Peaks gave the swamplings a wide berth.