He was different. Changed. Invincible.
Invictus.
He rolled the name about his mouth, playing with it, trying it on for feel.
It felt right. It spoke of Kings and Gods. Of a leader of men who would change this world forever.
He looked down at the slender, sultry creature before him who looked up at him with mysterious yearning and knew that she would be by his side for the duration. He grabbed her with his strong arms, lifting her so her feet left the ground, kissing her soft lips, causing her to moan in pleasure as her hands roamed the hard muscles of his back.
He knew what was to happen next, that they were to fall to the altar and make love in the flickering warmth of the Temple Pyre, further defiling the Ancestors of the Barbarian Kings with their ecstasy.
But no.
Still wrapped in his arms, feet clear of the ground, Ceceline pulled away, looking at him with serious eyes, full of concern.
“Wake up!”
Her voice sounded hollow, distant, as though she were shouting at him down a long, stone tunnel.
“Wake up, my King!”
Something wasn’t right. The Temple shook and he dropped Ceceline, looking about.
This wasn’t how it went.
The burning pyre disappeared in a cloud of steam as a gushing wave of ice-cold water blasted through the temple, smashing him clean from his feet.
***
“Wake up, my King!”
Invictus sat bolt upright, waking with a start, his face dripping from the decanter of ice-cold water poured over his head. He shook his long hair, droplets spraying the silken sheets, looking about, unable to discern for a moment where he was, what was happening.
He paused for a moment, allowed himself time to focus.
He was in his chamber, Ceceline by his side on the edge of the bed, her face full of concern.
Next to him, crumpled sheets where the serving girl had lain with him, only – he gazed out of the far window to the starry night that threatened to break into dawn – five hours ago?
He never slept that long.
As an immortal god-king, sleep was optional, allowing himself an hour here and there as a treat; for a wielder of absolute power, sometimes it was liberating to lose yourself for a time in the random vagaries of the dreamworld, where anything could happen and circumstance was beyond your control.
But five hours?
“Are you okay, my King? I found you asleep and couldn’t rouse you,” she gestured to the empty decanter, “so was forced to take action.”
Invictus nodded, before replying.
“I’m… I’m fine. Just puzzled, is all.” He frowned, adding, “I don’t even remember falling asleep. Normally it only happens when I will it. And the dreams… so real, so vivid. More like memories, brought to life.”
He thought for a moment, pondering things, casting his eyes over to the goblet of wine he’d drank as he’d made love a few hours ago, before dismissing it; drugs, poisons, these things didn’t affect him.
He reached out with his sixth sense, Ceceline following him into the ether, before they both turned as one to the thick, down pillow behind him. He reached out, moving it aside and Ceceline frowned as they unveiled an item hidden beneath him, that would have been mere inches from his head as he slumbered.
She grabbed the small, stone artefact, holding it high, so that it dangled, twisting and spinning on its cord.
“A shamanic runestone?” she mused. “The symbol of Water.”
Invictus sniffed at the discovery. Water; the element of erosion, pathfinding, seeking the truth. Why would someone place this beneath his head? What was in there that they wished to reveal and bring to light?
“Its power is drained,” she continued. “Whatever the spirits were trying to find, it was too exhausting for them to search through your memories. They couldn’t go back far enough.”
“They went back a hundred years, my dear. Further than I would like anyone, bar you, to venture into my mind. The question is, why? And possibly more importantly, how?”
The High Seeress nodded, her eyes distant, searching, as she pondered his questions.
The practice of spirit-craft was banned in the Kingdom, for knowledge is power and the King’s power was absolute; aside from Invictus, only the Seeress herself and her coven were allowed to use the gift.
Kurnos’ hounds were trained to seek out the scent of the craft as they roamed the land. Those males they found with the gift were captured for the Hunt, along with the rest of Kurnos’ victims; the females, however, brought to Ceceline, examined like a prize pony, before she decided whether to train them, or dispose of them.
But somehow, somewhere, someone had slipped the net. A shaman, maybe more than one, had forged this artefact, desperate to evoke some memories in Invictus’, for what reasons they didn’t know.
They couldn’t have travelled far – Kurnos’ patrols were everywhere, and a rogue shaman would have been tracked down in short order. Which meant that someone in the Kingdom, either in the city or a town not too distant, was harbouring them, keeping them safe.
Someone who had a dislike for the Huntsman.
Invictus nodded his accord with Ceceline, a century together meaning their minds often ran as one, words seldom needed.
“Go to it, rouse your Seers and scry.”
“And the girl?”
“Memphias will find her and bring her to you.”
She nodded and made to go.
“Oh, and Cece?”
“Hmm?”
He grinned, thoughts of treachery cast aside for an instant.
“You look as hot today as you did a century ago.”
She flashed him a smouldering look before laughing and leaving his chamber, crossing the bridge to the Seers’ Tower to wake her girls.
Chapter Three:
Tulador: Fertile. Green. A land of wide fields and simple farming folk who had no cause to grumble at the aristocracy who governed, distant but fair, in their Pen of white stone. To the East of the Merethian Steppes, between the capital and the Merchant Coast, Tulador was the breadbasket of the kingdom.
Save the harvest, little happened here to disturb the peace. Until today.
The cows looked up, curious, from their grass, chewing absent-mindedly as they watched with interest the road that wound its way twixt field and fen. The farmers at work lay down their pitchforks and hoes, their labourers’ lunches of bread and cheese stopping halfway to their mouths as the ground began to rumble and a cloud of dust kicked up, signalling the arrival of visitors to their land.
Black shapes hove into view, a score, clad in black form-fitting leather despite the noon-day heat, riding tall, black steeds and led by a duo that rode to the fore; one, handsome, in a white robe over which he wore shining silver armour that dazzled in the sun; the other, white haired, grim of visage, clad in the same stylised black armour as the men that trailed behind him.
The peasants looked down as the formation thundered past, for it was best not to attract the attention of the legendary Black Riders.
For the Khrdas were on the move, and where they rode, death was sure to follow.
***
That infernal humming. Droning, mindless, the sound made by a happy idiot. Memphias fumed, wishing it were so, but the cheerful rider beside him, long hair streaming in the breeze, was none other than Bavard, General of the King’s legions, leader of ten thousand clansmen. Ever-merry he may be, but idiot certainly not. And one would be a fool to accuse him of such in ear-shot.
Memphias had often wondered who would win should he ever challenge the General for real; one, tall, strong, clad in ensorcelled silver plate and wielding his runic hammer of stone; the other, a master assassin, lithe, fast, lethal with dagger and throwing star.
Of course, they’d duelled in the past, light-hearted combat for the amusement of the King, but such games were an unfair test of the Khrda’s skills; for to hold back, to stay his blade, to aim to knockdown rather
than kill, this was not his style. He felt stifled in duels, handicapped.
No, he preferred to kill quickly, cleanly. Striking from the shadows and leaving before the deed was noticed. Not his way to draw things out, taking pleasure from every moment. Not like Bavard did. Not like the King.
Invictus. Now there would be a fight. There would be a target. Could a dagger, even his own envenomed tools that had claimed a hundred, a hundred-hundred lives, kill a God-King?
He’d never had the opportunity to duel the King, not during his sixty years of service.
Sixty years…
To look at, Memphias was no older than thirty, his close-cropped hair naturally white, not bleached with age, his piercing grey eyes having lost none of their youthful lustre.
Such was the boon of being in service to Invictus; the God-King’s immortal presence seemed to draw in those around him, like a heavy stone placed on a stretched out sheet, weighing it down and causing those things close enough to roll down and join it. To be in his presence was to live in a different flow of time to mortal men.
There were other boons, too. Darker boons.
Boons that suited the assassin and the warrior.
He shook his idle musings from his mind, focusing on the task in hand, for the road would soon be coming to an end, the shining, white towers already rising ahead over the green fields.
Pen-Tulador. Home of his target, the Lord Arbistrath.
Tracking the girl down had been too easy. He’d gotten word of his King’s bidding the morning before, that a servant girl was on the run, to be brought back to Ceceline for, ahem, ‘questioning.’ The girl didn’t even make it to the city walls before Memphias had come out of the shadows, rendering her unconscious with a nerve strike and carting her back to the Seers’ Tower.
Questioning. He shuddered at the complete injustice of the word, for it was no questioning. It was rape, of the most brutal and violating kind, the Seeress leaving the poor girl nothing but a dribbling wreck, her mind and soul scoured, shrivelled and useless like a gourd of wine left out in the sun.
It had done the job though; her orders had indeed come from the home of Arbistrath. This, plus the fact that the Seeresses had been unable to scry the fortress, some kind of shadowing, shielding effect hiding the place from their sight, had been enough to warrant the dispatch of the Khrdas.
And once the Khrdas had been dispatched, the deed was as good as done.
Enter the keep and capture the traitorous Lord and any Shamans found within.
Through will or might.
Memphias sniffed. He preferred the cold subtlety of a hidden blade.
***
Marlyn squinted into the glaring mid-day sun from his vantage point atop the gleaming white walls of the citadel, his keen eyes shaded by the roof of the ramparts, scanning for any hint of the force his betters had warned him about.
It still seemed surreal, that the gates should be shut, the walls manned, the guard mobilised, ready to repel a force sent by their own King. It didn’t make sense, any of it. Why would the Clansmen be coming here, to Pen-Tulador? Their Lord was a good ruler, in his way. Sure, he may have kept himself to himself, but he looked after the land, as his father had before him; his taxes were less than crippling and – rarely for a Lord of the Land – he did his best to keep his people safe when the Hunt came a-roaming.
But then what would Marlyn know? He’d been on the Guard for two weeks.
A heavy hand on his shoulder and he turned, smiling, as Daveth stood next to him, bow ever-slung over his shoulder.
“Still no sign, eh? I’m starting to doubt these rumours of our impending demise.”
Marlyn chuckled out of nerves, but also out of genuine humour, for Daveth had always had a way of settling his nerves; like brothers they were, from toiling the fields as lads to trying their luck with the maids in the village tavern, they were inseparable in their youth.
So it stood to reason that when Daveth had signed up for the guard, Marlyn had followed.
But where the bigger lad, with his cocky confidence, had excelled in every aspect of training, Marlyn had struggled; he was strong – all farmer’s lads were – but the bow, the sword, all the weapons had felt cumbersome, unwieldy in his hands, his strikes and shots amateurish and clumsy.
He couldn’t understand why the Guard still used such ancient weapons when the mechanical crossbows and ballistae of the Clans had been in use for a century or more. But then Marlyn had always been mechanically minded; even on his father’s farm he’d kept his mind busy, contriving new and ingenious ways of threshing and ploughing with ever greater efficiency, using pulleys, winches, cables to give one horse the strength of ten.
Not that they’d always gone according to plan, mind.
His father still hadn’t forgiven him for the gelding that had been catapulted a hundred yards to land in the next field.
“Thinking of home?”
He nodded, never any point trying to conceal the truth from his friend.
“Aye. Wondering how dad’s getting on with the farm. Wondering how he’ll cope if the Clansmen are actually marching on us.”
He turned to Daveth, concern on his young face of only nineteen summers.
“Will we actually stand a chance? What if they bring siege weapons? Towers?”
His friend didn’t reply at once, instead looking out into the far distance, as though he could see their village ten miles off.
“Mum’ll be baking right now,” he mused, as though to himself. “Fresh bread, ready for dinner tonight. Fresh butter from farmer Lowe, down the road. Bacon from our own pigs.”
A gruff voice from behind them caused them to start, break out of the reverie.
“You’re guardsmen now, lads. You’ll eat your gruel and be thankful for it!”
Sergeant Poland was a grizzled veteran, lined face stern, but there was a grim humour beneath his stony veneer that kept his men in line without them resenting him.
He walked over, his mail coat clinking in time to the limp of his gammy leg, ceremonial sword tied at his belt.
Ceremonial. Hah! On the drill ground, Marlyn had stood in awe as the ageing warrior had disarmed five recruits in as many moves with that ceremonial sabre. The man’s skill was legend, him being the personal tutor to Arbistrath himself, or so they said.
Rumour even had it that, in his youth, the man had approached the Khrdas, aiming to join their elite ranks, such was his skill and ruthlessness in the day. But for his gammy leg, perhaps he could have made the cut.
Now though, he was content, at least on the surface, to be the man in charge of training the new recruits to the Guard. And a fine job of it he did. Not a man had a bad word to say about him.
“So, young ‘uns, we comparing mama’s recipes? Fine conversation to while away the watch.”
The pair laughed.
“That’s about it, sarge!”
The officer shot Daveth a look of warning, only half serious.
“What have I told you, son, a million times?”
Marlyn grinned as his embarrassed friend recited the mantra.
“There’s only two types of sarge; the massage. And the sausage.”
“Right! And do I look like either?”
“No, sergeant.”
“Very good. Bear that in mind.”
He joined them on the edge of the wall, high above the moat. Other guardsmen, too, were posted at points along the wall on this side of the gatehouse. Another wall was opposite, fifty feet away, with the causeway between them. The design was cunning, for no enemy could reach the gatehouse without running a gauntlet of bowfire from above.
Against any conventional enemy, the fortress would have been a difficult prospect.
Even Clansmen would have struggled, for they favoured horse and scimitar over battering ram and siege tower, though sheer weight of numbers would have finally won them through.
Against any conventional enemy, they might have stood a chance.
They didn�
�t face a conventional enemy.
A piercing scream echoed across the ramparts, before fading into the depths below, culminating in a splash.
Frantic motion, adrenaline surging, as guardsmen leaned out, peering this way and that to find the source of the scream.
Another cry of terror, receding then ending with a splat of finality, as a guardsman down the wall was dragged over the edge.
The sergeant frowned in confusion.
“No…”
Eyes widened in horror as Daveth and Marlyn looked out to the wall opposite, their stomachs clutched in icy fingers of dread.
There, on the blindingly white wall opposite, figures could be seen somehow crawling their way up, gripping to the sheer stone, almost invisible in the sunlight thanks to pure white sheets that covered them head to toe.
Marlyn stood gawping, but Daveth burst into action, ever the one to act first. He unslung his bow, nocked an arrow and fired, the missile streaking across the depths and thudding into one of the white sheets, pinning it to the wall and unveiling the climbing figure.
The black-armoured warrior turned, glaring up at them with evil masked eyes, suspended by one spiked vambrace dug into the stone, before continuing his climb with renewed pace.
“Khrdas…”
They looked to their sergeant, hesitant, seeing shock and fear warring across his face, but in the end, neither won, his resolve steeling with the experience of decades, before grasping his sabre and brandishing it in the air.
“Guards! Defend your stations!”
Screams and war cries abounded as the battle was joined, the climbing Khrdas leaping the walls as they reached the top and charging into the midst of the defenders, striking with precision and skill with their daggers and razor-clad forearms.
The two new recruits stood, unsure of themselves, as Poland flew into battle to aid his men, but their indecision was cut short as a black-clad figure vaulted over the wall behind them, rising slowly and menacingly into a practiced martial crouch.
Marlyn took his bow with trembling hands, ready to fire an arrow, but fumbled, dropping his ammunition to the floor. Daveth was beside him, calmer, weapon already aimed.
The Fall to Power Page 4
