“I will stay,” Karn said slowly, feeling out the words.
Nathan nodded once, abruptly, then turned back to Urza and Trevar. “It is a good match,” he said. Nathan motioned Jaffry forward, and Urza joined his hand with Myrr’s, then said loudly, “We welcome Myrr Ortovi into our manor.”
It was a signal for the others in attendance to flock in and congratulate the newly engaged as well as each other for a fine bargain struck.
Urza found the golem quickly. “I will be off, Karn. I will bring the balance of your personal effects on my next visit.” He paused a long moment, giving the golem an evaluating stare. “I had hoped your travels about Dominaria would give you an appreciation for its lands and people. It’s good to see that I was right.”
Karn read into that a reluctant admission that Urza might actually consider the golem a being of his own, not that it mattered in the larger picture of course. Still, it helped to reinforce Karn’s resolve that his choice had been the right one. So long as he—and Urza—believed that the golem could make a difference in the preparations against Phyrexia, Karn felt compelled to answer that higher calling. What else was there in any life—human or artifact, mortal or immortal—beside a useful existence?
Gatha’s colos pens were heavily reinforced. Extra thick walls were tipped with spears of valuable iron pointing inward and down to keep the beasts from getting too aggressive. Now a head reared up, the colos butting aside one spear. It had learned to use its protective scale already.
From his viewing platform, Gatha studied the single incredible beast for the results of his latest experiments. The massive colos—larger than most by five hands at least—clawed at the ground with razor-sharp split hooves. Its rank breath frosted in the crisp morning air. Gatha found no physical deformities except the one he had given it—the same hard bone armoring its horns now grew in plate-sized scale over half of its hide. It was patchwork still, spaced in between large areas still shaggy with the usual coat, but no longer suffering degradation problems. His attempts at developing a superior war beast were hitting closer to the mark. Another three trials and he might try cutting the armored scale into the Matrix and use it on some Keldons crippled by earlier testing and now good only for experimentation, perhaps after one more trial.
Though occupied with studying the beast, Gatha still kept a wary eye on the party being led carefully down the trail toward his labs. In Keld, it never paid to be unobservant. Gatha knew his visitor would be no descendant of the long-dead Trohg. All warriors with a pedigree from the witch king had been given the safe routes and passes to his lab. Even now, a pair of Trohg’s descendents, six times removed, stood guard at the laboratory’s main door with wickedly barbed halberds. Twelve years old, the both of them were already standing above six feet and taking early warlord trials the following year. Gatha considered them mild successes.
The approaching party passed beneath the crude arch erected over the path. He recognized Varden, a minor witch king and—lately—a troublemaker in council. His escort was none other than Kreig, another of Trohg’s descendents and Gatha’s best subject ever. This would demand his personal attention, and he scaled back down the short ladder to the frost-bitten ground below.
He doffed his fur-lined cap and gloves and tucked them beneath his armored breastplate. The armor of Keldon design was made of thinly beaten, overlapping steel plates trimmed in red leather and gold. It was one of many rich gifts presented him by Kreig’s two doyenne. He ran a hand over his oiled hair, slicking it back so that his tri-widow’s peak tattoos stood out prominently. On the back of his right hand the personal sigil of Trohg had been tattooed. It bound Gatha to Trohg and the witch king’s lineage and signified his acceptance in Keld with all rights and privileges. More, it shielded him from any immediate danger—by tradition any dispute with a protected person must be taken to the senior warrior of that line. Kreig, with Gatha’s latest help, that would forever and always be Kreig.
“My friend,” Kreig greeted, a high Keld salutation rarely offered inside the Keldon nation and never to an outsider. Gatha steeled himself to prevent a wince as Kreig squeezed down on his shoulders. “Varden demands an audience with you,” he said dropping back into the lower tongue. He shot a glare back toward Varden who averted his eyes from the more powerful witch king. “I took his manor and mate hostage to insure his good behavior.”
This meant that Varden came with an argument and possible challenge. Kreig may have overstepped himself slightly—certainly Varden thought so, his nostrils flaring with pent rage—usurping what was traditionally the censuring power of the council. Gatha doubted many would argue with his witch king.
“I will hear him.”
Varden wasted no time. Though several inches shy of Kreig, the smaller warrior showed no fear of the other’s presence. “You,” he thrust a thick finger toward Gatha, a fighting offense between any regular Keldon males, “you refused my request for The Gift.” The Gift was how Keldons referred to the preconception process Gatha had started with Trohg and applied judiciously depending on his own needs and whims. Usually, the effort was not worth potential returns—not with the strong line already backing him. “I desire another son, one who deserves warlord trials.”
Varden’s first son had been born lame, guaranteeing him a position in Keldon society barely more than slave labor. At least with a battlefield injury, one might expect to live out life as a craftsman.
Gatha had expected something like this. “No,” he said.
Hands balling into sledgelike fists, Varden barely controlled his fury. “No? What do you mean, no?” he yelled.
“No,” Gatha replied with quiet strength, his low Keld tongue perfect these days. “I refuse your request. I thought it was clear from the message I sent. If you need to hear it from my lips, then so be it.” He shrugged. “No.”
“Lowland fodder,” Varden stormed, spittle flying from his lips. “You will change your mind,” he said, more a command than a threat.
Carving his place within Keld had taken Gatha better than four decades. He still remembered those early years, always self-effacing and at times cowering because it was expected. Trohg had changed that, first ever to name the mage a friend after the successful advancement of his own son to warlord and then witch king status. Gatha had over a century since to grow into his new power, and he knew how to wield it. Varden neither frightened nor even worried him, and the warlord’s lack of understanding of that only proved the legitimacy of Gatha’s refusal. He was genetically damaged in body and mind—in the mage’s opinion.
“I will not change my mind.” Gatha folded his arms across his chest, resolute. “Your son is not fit for enhancement.” He dug the barb in deeper. “Though perhaps I will request him for,” and he had to drop back into Argivian for the word, “experiments. I will never use your blood in my work again. I expect your diseased line to die out.” Gatha turned to Kreig. “This interview is over,” he said. The message was apparent—Varden no longer mattered.
Varden shook with rage. One hand fastened onto the hilt of his broadsword. His darkly tattooed eyes glared fiercely down on the smaller man. “You do this to us,” he yelled, “To me. Your work over the years, deciding who travels on and who falls. It will stop soon, little one. I vow it.”
Varden stomped away, his terrifying exit made comical when he realized that he would require Kreig or another escort to pass him safely through the snares that warded Gatha’s labs. Gatha waited for him to bluff it through alone, but in the end Varden waited just past the arch, fuming.
“You have made an enemy for us,” Kreig said, careful to keep their conversation from Varden’s ears. “Varden will summon his warhost. Other warlords might stand against me now. I had hoped this wouldn’t happen for another year.”
Left unspoken but implied with his last statement was the fact that Kreig had anticipated such a day. Gatha had merely accelerated the timetable. It left the mage feeling confident in his greatest subject, who would grow greate
r yet with the slow-time waters being given him the last several years. His initial supply kept preserved in a stasis field, the both of them could easily live another century, then, if necessary, Kreig’s warhost could visit Tolaria and request more.
Gatha was not about to see his work ruined now by something so easily overcome as chance. “Give me the names of those who might stand against us. I will entice them to stay away from Varden.” The easy offer of withholding of his magics could influence most warlords. Kreig cocked his head to one side, considering, then grunted a simple acknowledgment. The mage smiled. “You then only have to crush Varden.”
* * *
Even as breath came in frosted clouds, the battle cries of the Keldons warmed the air and stirred bloodlust. There were screams of challenge, personal conquest, and the bellowing of orders as commands of the opposing warlords were routed. Only a few shouts of pain were heard, except perhaps in the most tragic of cases where limbs were lost or backbones cleaved, allowing those final seconds of painful clarity before oblivion. No fearful shouts were called—not so much as a whimper—not from these men. They would bleed their flesh white, staining the frostbitten earth and stone dark with the red of their life before admitting to cowardice in any fashion or guise. It was a clashing of titans, marauders who would fight and die to the last man if so ordered here on this lonely plateau, no ordinary contest. Mist wreathed the land farther down, piling into a dense fog that cascaded down the mountainside to fill the lower valleys. It was as if the gods themselves had elevated the battleground above the ken of mortal man.
A broken ridgeline split the plateau unevenly, the scarp of sharp rocks pushed up during a recent movement of the earth. The battle raged only on the larger side—a thousand warriors joined in ferocious combat. A few had claimed the higher ground for their fighting, loosing hand-pitched rocks and the occasional axe down on those below. Boulders large and small littered the battlefield, minor obstacles Keldon warriors dodged to get at their enemy.
Leather-armored footsoldiers carried hooked longswords or wickedly spiked maces. Nearly all tied smokesticks of colos horn into their hair. The smoke drove many Keldons into a battle frenzy and was known for the nervous anxiety it bred in other races. They fought in single combat only where a blood feud was acknowledged between two warriors. Mostly they clumped together and dashed madly into enemy groups, bristling juggernauts of steel and sinew. Against any other foe, a Keldon warrior would have trusted the tough coloshide leather and his own strength to stand up to a blow, setting up a killing stroke of his own. Those who relied on such tactics lay among the fallen here. This was not a battle to be won on ferocious strength alone. Here strength and skill carried the battle only so far. It would be won by the warhost commanders, the Keldon warlords, the witch kings.
Kreig held the inside flank of his warhost, turning his broad back to the sharp ridge as he slashed his way through the thickest fighting, well armored with metal gauntlets and greaves, interlocking plates covering chest, shoulders and hips. His helm allowed a narrow slit for vision, the opening guarded from a lucky sword thrust by twin crescent-shaped blades. A ridge of curving spikes stood out from his shoulders, each one vented to a cavity built into the neckline where smoldering embers had been placed to wreath his headgear and shoulders in fearsome smoke. The leather joints in his armor were made with the shaggy colos hair still in place to bring about the illusion that the armor concealed beast rather than man.
Gatha’s greatest witch king wielded his Keldon greatsword with both hands, the silvery finish of the blade now marred with gore and running droplets of blood. The bloodlust of several hundred warriors coursed through his veins, exploded in his heart, pounded at his temples. He drew upon the warhost’s strength, their courage. His eighth opponent lay in two at his feet, cleaved from right shoulder to left hip. The warrior’s stabbing sword had pierced the witch king’s right thigh. The Keldon simply drew it out as if it was a mere annoyance and tossed it aside with a howl of derision for Varden’s warriors.
“Varden!” he called out, challenging the other witch king to stand against him.
His own warriors, those close enough to hear the challenge, called out his own name in a chant. “Kreig! Kreig! Kreig!” It left little question from where the great witch king commanded. Sporadic calls of “Varden” were little more than half-hearted answers to the general chant, not a reply to his challenge. None could stand against this witch king. No being of Dominaria could hope to match him.
Another warrior came at him, this one slashing with a halberd. With a spinning cut, Kreig took the head of the polearm off just behind the blade. He continued his spin, coming back around in a straight-armed attack that took the warrior’s head easily from his shoulders. Kreig picked up the head and tossed it into a knot of Varden’s men who were trying to protect the lower slopes of the scarp. A sickle-axe sunk into the ground near his foot. Kreig picked that up as well. His return throw found an enemy warrior halfway up the slope of sharp rocks. Even throwing upward, his strength punched the point of the weapon through armor and chest to stick out the other’s back. No one would be protected from him.
Where Kreig walked the battle turned in his favor. His closest warriors fought and died to keep abreast of him, which pushed the witch king forward all the harder. They were lucky to simply trail back from his lead in a deep arrow, leaving behind a field littered with dead or dying men and a few scattered fights. Kreig could see Varden now, leading his men from behind—ordering them forward while he and his private guards advanced much slower. A thick line of Varden’s supporters separated Kreig from his enemy—but not for long.
His greatsword flicking like a dragon’s tongue, Kreig forced his way into a knot of mace-wielding soldiers. He left amputated limbs, shattered bone and cleft armor in his wake. Two heavy-spiked clubs stuck into him, abdomen and elbow. A downward slice took the arms off one man. The other he dispatched with an easy thrust through the chest. The weapons still sticking in him, he felt no pain and never slowed from wounds which would have killed a mortal man. He was more than mortal at this moment, the energy at the core of his being multiplied several hundred-fold. He was Kreig. He was Keld.
Kreig looked over the field at two Keldon warhosts joined in battle. Each one, by himself was a superior warrior. Together they were a proud and fierce nation. Where each warrior fell to a brother the nation diminished. His nation diminished.
He chopped the head off a war sickle aimed for his neck, his sword edge slicing through the wooden shaft with ease. Instead of a return stroke, taking another life, Kreig fastened one gauntleted hand onto the other’s long hair and pulled the warrior to arm’s length to stare into the witch king’s dark gaze.
“Keld!” he bellowed a new war cry, taking the nation’s name for his own.
He shouted it into the warrior’s face, turned him with an easy roll of the wrist, and set him facing against his former comrades. He could feel the man’s loyalties swaying on the field, caught between the powers of two witch kings. Kreig took up a stabbing sword from a fallen warrior of his own host and thrust its hilt into the warrior’s hands.
“Keld!” he yelled again, a cry the warrior took up for his own.
Kreig swept forward—invincible in his power. Any warrior brave enough to meet him was converted with the call of home and nation and set back on the side of Kreig. With each convert Varden’s power waned. More rallied to Kreig, in singles, then pairs and then trios. Finally the remaining enemy forces fell back, regrouping around a solid center. Varden pushed his way to the fore, broadsword in one hand and his personal crest in the other. Kreig summoned his own colors, taking the greatsword one-handed despite the awkward grip.
“Varden,” the smaller force called out, summoning the last of their strength in a mad rush at the opposing center.
“Keld,” the warhost of Kreig answered.
Led by their mightiest, the army swarmed forward and over Varden’s group. The witch kings came against each other. Krei
g’s greatsword punched through metal plating to slice into Varden’s left leg. Varden’s own stroke slipped into an unprotected space and stabbed deeply into Kreig’s side. Powered by their greater strength, each witch king felt the pain of near-mortal wounds. Kreig rebounded faster. He swept his blade down and then around in a grand overhead sweep while Varden barely had time to bring his own sword up in an attempt to parry. Varden’s broadsword shattered under the vicious stroke, and Kreig followed through to split open the witch king’s head. His blade turned slightly by Varden’s spine, Kreig’s stroke finally died when it stuck into the other man’s left hip.
Kreig stood over the fallen witch king, the battle over. He wrenched his weapon free, held it aloft with blood dripping down in a christening shower. No more challenges were called forth, only the victory bellows of his followers. Keld was his now. He would lead its greatest armies into the field, and here in the mountains he would rule. He saw a tiered throne in his vision, decorated with bodies of his fallen enemies. He looked his nation in the eye, challenging it, and it glanced away, subdued.
* * *
Gatha remembered a time when he had stood in Council, ready to address the assembled doyen, and had deliberated taken the uppermost tier in order for all to look on him as he spoke. He had demurred then, unsure of protocol. This day, standing with Kreig as the witch king set forth to claim that empty spot, the mage could only think back on that moment and count himself fortunate to be alive for even considering the idea.
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