by Ben Galley
‘In there!’ Verix pointed to the rubble. The truth was useful for once. Modren dropped them as quickly as he had grabbed them.
‘Farden!’ he cried. The mage ran to his side. ‘She’s under… this,’ Modren mumbled and cursed as he hauled brick after obsidian brick out of the pile. It was all he could say. The dust took the rest of his words and laid them to rest. His gauntlets clanged off each brick, as if they were the teeth of a vice. Farden was there with him, his Scalussen armour glittering in the light of the fire and lightning above.
Farden licked his lips, making cement of his tongue. ‘I’m sure she’s…’ he began, but his words failed when they caught sight of a golden patch of cloth trapped between the grip of two rafters.
‘Elessi!’ Modren shouted, as he dragged the huge beam clear. His magick and desperation lent him strength, and somehow, limbs shaking, he did it. Farden dug until he found a face. The breath stuck in his dirt-lined throat. There was not a lot of blood, but any would have been a travesty on Elessi’s face. A smear of it led a straight trail from her nose to her ear. Her eyes were fluttering, but she was alive. She gasped as she saw Modren and Farden above her. ‘Is it dead?’
Farden looked up. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We need to move!’
‘Help me, Farden,’ Modren yelled, as yet another beam came crashing down beside them. The daemon was in his final throes now.
‘My leg!’ Elessi cried, as Modren dragged her free. It was broken. Two places at least. That was obvious from the angle it hung at. They did not waste any time fixing it now. The infant Spire was caving in, and the daemon with it. As Farden yelled to the stragglers, Modren ran to the door and burst into the sunlight. Farden was hot on his heels with Verix, Loki, and a handful of others. They barely made it out before the door-frame collapsed, spraying them with a shower of dust and splinters. A cheer went up from the army as the daemon disappeared into the rubble.
‘That building is cursed,’ Farden muttered, eyes roaming over the crushed and broken walls, the arrows in the splintered scaffolding, the severed and smoking tail of something dead and ghastly lying in the bricks. Tyrfing and Durnus were running over, he could see their Scalussen armour glinting through the dust cloud. He raised his sword to salute them, and as he did, the sky was blackened with smoke.
There came an enormous whooshing sound, like the noise of the wind folding in on itself. Everyone was thrown to the ground again, much to the screaming of Elessi. In the space of a blink, a daemon stood between them and the approaching crowd, wreathed in the smoke of whatever spell he had just cast. He turned to stare down at the five figures sprawled on the grass, and his black lip curled at the sight of the gods.
‘The prayer must be strong to bring such solid apparitions to this earth,’ the daemon growled. This one had just two eyes, grey, tinged with red, and curled horns.
‘Strong indeed,’ said Verix, getting to her feet. Farden caught sight of her shadow and saw it had sprouted faint wings.
The daemon laughed. ‘Strong enough to stop me?’
‘No, but these humans are.’ Verix pointed to the smoking wreck of the Spire, and the black corpse that lay draped across it. By her side, Loki wore a smug look.
The daemon snarled. Cinders flew from his black-sand tongue. ‘I think it is time for you to return to where you belong, cursed ones!’ Verix stood her ground proudly as the creature lifted a hand, brandishing five wickedly hooked claws. Before Modren or Farden could even flinch, the daemon swiped, and Verix was cloven in two. She melted like a pillar of smoke, vanishing into the breeze.
The daemon paused to admire his work, and then raised another hand to finish Loki and the rest. His claws dripped with the blood of men from further down the hill. He bled orange from several cuts, but still he couldn’t help but grin as he flexed his arm. Elessi felt for Modren’s hand as the Undermage summoned a spell with the other. Farden thought of a vulture-headed boat and clenched his teeth.
Two huge spells ploughed into the daemon’s back and sent him reeling. Modren’s spell was already in full swing as the daemon cart-wheeled over them, his curled claws flailing, He ducked, feeling their wind kiss his neck, and then chased them with his spell, burying a shard of ice in the creature’s rib. The daemon fell to his knees, snarling and whining.
In a moment of utter fury, all patience dissolved, Farden stood up to face it. He ripped the cloak from his back and raised his empty, glittering fists. He didn’t care for his lack of magick. He didn’t care about his lost sword. He didn’t care that the daemon, even on his knees, still towered over him. He didn’t care that his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest, this was his problem, and he would see it finished, even if it took his bare hands. They deserve better…
To his surprise, the daemon hesitated. His claws raked the ground, but he didn’t move. He licked his black lips and clicked his jaw, staring intently at the glittering gold and red armour on the mage’s fists, forearms, and legs. He spat fire at them.
‘What are you waiting for?!’ Farden challenged him. ‘Let’s finish this farce!’
Still the daemon didn’t move. He snuffled and hissed as Farden boldly took a step forward. ‘Godblood,’ he whispered, backing away. Tyrfing and Durnus were suddenly at the mage’s side, clutching spells between their charred fingers, ready to pounce.
They didn’t need to. Before the daemon disappeared, he pointed a claw at Farden and bared his black teeth. But it was all he did. With a blast of wind and a puff of charcoal smoke he was suddenly gone, whisked into the ether. Tyrfing ran to the lip of the hill and looked down at the city. There was no sign of the other daemon either. They had both vanished. ‘It’s over!’ he shouted. The roars and cheers began to rise into the air.
‘For now,’ said Durnus, over the noise. He looked to the mage by his side. ‘It would appear that something about you scared him off, Farden.’
Farden looked down at his forearms, gleaming in the sun. Dust never did manage to cling to Scalussen metal. ‘It would indeed,’ he murmured. Durnus sighed, patting Farden’s wrist.
‘Secrets,’ he said. ‘Even metal keeps them now.’ He made a simple gesture of touching Farden on the shoulder before he turned to walk away. Farden was left staring into space, knuckling his red-gold fists into his tired and dusty eyes. The stench of sulphur made him want to vomit. He resisted, for now.
All was silent again on the hill of Manesmark. Graveyard silent. Even the soldiers refrained from muttering. They stared at each other, conveying their confusion and relief in wide-eyed gazes and deep frowns. They had been witnesses to chaos. A chaos that had fallen from the sky. Dazed and confused, they milled about like bloody drunkards.
All was silent until a wretched scream tore open the sky. It was Modren, kneeling beside Elessi. Farden and the others rushed to his side, but he shoved them away. ‘Leave her be! Give her room!’ he shouted. She was lying twisted in the charred grass, eyes staring blankly at the sky. Modren gently lifted aside the curls that had fallen across her face, and revealed a long gash across her neck and chest, ripping into her golden dress; a gash that had already turned ugly and purple, a gash raked by a daemon-claw.
‘Is she alive?’ Farden burbled.
‘I don’t know!’ panicked Modren, gently rubbing Elessi’s cheek. Her head was limp like a doll’s.
‘Here, move out of the way!’ Tyrfing muscled Farden aside. He rubbed his vambrace on a patch of cloth and held it up to Elessi’s lips, which by now had gone a faint blue. Whatever poison had invaded her blood, it had acted like lightning. She was even cold to the touch.
Every single onlooker held their breath as Tyrfing brought his eye level with Elessi’s lips. He stared at his vambrace, waiting for a sign, praying for something, anything. Not today, they all prayed. Not today.
Suddenly there it was: the faintest mist imaginable, but a mist nonetheless. She was alive and breathing, but dangling by a poisonous thread. ‘Quickly! Get me a healer!’
‘Out of my way!’ s
houted Modren, as he gently picked Elessi up from the torn, blackened grass. Farden walked by his side, sword dragging through the dirt. ‘And where do you think you going?’ hissed Modren, without taking his hard eyes off his bride.
Farden narrowed his eyes at Elessi’s curls, dangling over Modren’s arm. Her gold dress was stone-ripped and dusty. The way her hands hung, so limp, so grey and lifeless, filled him with a hot rage. He tested his next words in his mouth before he let them loose. They felt right. In fact, he had never been so sure of anything in his life. ‘I’m going to find my daughter and I’m going to do what I couldn’t do before,’ he said. Modren looked up, a deep frown on his forehead. Farden picked up a fallen sword, eyed the blood along its edge, and then slammed it down the grass. He left it to wobble. ‘I’m going to kill her,’ he spat.
Loki alone stayed behind while the army trickled away. He stood in the broken circles of mud, dust, and the pinpricks of blood. He watched the bewildered soldiers leave without him, and looked on with a confused face. Dazed, shocked, they had left a man in the rubble. His whimpers were quiet now, and getting quieter by the moment. Loki went to stand over him.
His back was broken, that much was clear from the way he was slumped in between the two black stones. His skull was open to the air, seeping blood. His face caved in on one side. Not much hope for this one. His chest shuddered with every breath.
Loki bent over him, one foot on the stone by his head, and watched. He had never seen a man die before. It didn’t take long. The man blinked at him, once, maybe twice, before his crushed lungs failed him. He shuddered one last time, and then sagged, in ways only a corpse can. Loki watched his eyes fall unfocused, distant. Already heading to the other side.
Loki flinched, and backed away. He couldn’t help but shiver. Not with the cold, for the wind was strangely warm. Not with fear. He had felt none at the dying man. Not with guilt, nor sorrow. Such things were for human bodies, not his. No. He trembled with power, the power of a soul passing through him.
‘How very interesting,’ he said aloud, to the dead man, the stones, and the gathering crows.
To Be Continued…
1568 years ago
‘Knights!’
The nine turned as one. In the weak candlelight and dressed in their long white robes, they resembled ghosts loitering in the shadows.
The man standing between the door frame was a Pen, a Scalussen scholar. They and the Smiths had made Frostsoar their own, and in a way, they ruled the land around it. Powered by the wealth the armour of the Scalussen Smiths brought, and armed with their intelligence, they had created an independent land. Not lawless, no, but autonomous, whatever that word meant. Some had told Korrin it meant free. That was a precious thing in the Scattered Kingdoms, when all under the sun scrabbled for land and power.
The Pen was a rotund man, as scholars often were. He wore a silk gown and the traditional silk gloves of his office, made from the weavings of the rockworms that lived in the gaps between the ice sheets and the dark, dank earth beneath it. The nine knew this man well, though not by name; he was always hovering around their training yard, watching, noting, lingering. He had been there the day that the thousands had come to be tested. He had a neatly combed patch of silvery grey hair atop his head. His face was round like his belly, flushed pink in the cheeks. He had the look of a man who intensely enjoyed the mastery and use of long sentences. As he spoke, he tasted every word, twirling it around on his tongue before wrapping his lips around it.
‘Esteemed warriors, Gäel, Demsin, Chast, Estina, Balimuel, Lopia, Gaspid, Rosiff, and Korrin, I and High Smith Aurien thank you deeply for your ubiquitous patience. I am Master Wellen, and I know you have been anticipating this moment for many a day now.’
‘Many a day? Try a year,’ muttered Estina. ‘Nobody’s told us anything apart from eat, sleep, train.’
Gaspid, who had become the unofficial leader of the nine, elbowed her. ‘Quiet down.’
Wellen seemed well aware of Estina’s fiery tongue, and also utterly immune to it. He looked at her as if studying an interesting specimen. ‘All of you, despite some of our initial doubts at having chosen the right candidates,’ a tiny glance in Korrin’s direction, ‘have excelled in every aspect. We now feel it is time for you to move to the next stage of our ambitious exploit.’
‘And what is that?’
Master Wellen smiled. ‘Come,’ he waved. ‘I will show you.’
Swivelling on his heel, the Master led them deeper into the corridors, until the air grew hot and smoky around them. Like moles they tread deeper and deeper into the earth, passing through tunnels intricately carved and forged from iron and black marble.
Soon, they came to a wide balcony where the tunnels unfolded into a huge cavern, thick with steam and heat and smoke. A hundred forges burnt orange beneath them. Countless workers and Smiths scuttled to and fro like ants, tending their fires and anvils and benches. The cavern rattled with conversation, ringing out with the sounds of hammers and chisels.
‘Welcome to the Forges, Knights. They run as deep as the tower reaches high.’
The nine stared at the bustle below. The heat was welcome on their cold cheeks.
‘This way,’ Master Wellen ushered them on, around a corner and down a spiralling set of iron steps to a secluded section of the Forges. Those they passed seemed nervous and excited. Eager smiles met their gazes wherever they turned.
‘And here we are,’ Wellen finally said, as they reached a hollow in the rock, lined with candles and torches. A few men and women stood by, clad in sooty Smith’s robes. They held tools in their hands. They looked exhausted. One man, dressed in a robe of brown and red, stood apart from the rest. He was a tall man, and broad too. His hair was of flaxen gold and his eyes were tawny, flecked with bronze. He stared at the nine with an expression as blank and yet as deep as a column of unused parchment. The nine nodded to him, but he did not move. He too looked exhausted.
But it was the armour that held their eyes. And how wide those eyes became, as they roved over the nine flawless suits of armour standing against the wall of the hollow.
Polished, thought Korrin. No. He instantly shook his head. The word failed miserably. It failed just as all the others did. Intricate. Masterful. Gleaming… The words paled in comparison and sounded ill-fitting on his lips. The armour was simply beyond description. Crimson red and summer gold, it shimmered in the candlelight. It seemed almost liquid in the way that its scales warped and bent. It seemed to shiver and glow as if it were still molten. It stole his tongue away, and he and the rest of the nine could do nothing but simply stare in numb silence at the wall of metal before them.
Each breastplate had been engraved in painful detail with an animal of some sort. Korrin’s eyes roved over them, naming each one: an eagle, a bear, a dragon, a wolf, a snake, a bastion, a sabre-cat, a hawk, and a coelo. Their eyes and tusks and teeth glittered with jewels. Korrin found himself longing for the wolf, naturally. It looked exactly like the wolves of the star-lit ice, the ones he watched in the quiet hours, the brief hours when he was alone and thoughtful.
After a while, Lopia, the southern man the others had taken to calling Lop, rubbed his stubbled chin and took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ was all he could say. The others nodded, agreeing with the sentiment.
‘This is your armour, Knights, the Nine. The finest armour the Smiths of Scalussen have ever made, the finest armour that Emaneska and the gods,’ here Wellen glanced at the tawny-eyed man. ‘have ever seen.’
‘What are we, Wellen? You call us Knights, but Knights of what?’ Balimuel rumbled. ‘What is all this for?’ The others looked expectantly at the Master. The question had burnt inside them all for so long now.
Wellen smiled. If his hands hadn’t been clasped behind him, they would have seen them shaking. ‘You are to be Knights of Scalussen. Guardians, if you will. Protectors, as the name Scalussen means.’
‘Protectors of what?’ asked Estina.
‘Why, of E
maneska, of course.’
‘All of it?’
‘All of it.’
‘Just the nine of us?’
‘The nine, indeed.’
They all blew great, heavy sighs, heavy with awe and disbelief. Korrin’s eyes were wide. ‘So this is what we’ve been training for?’
‘Correct, master Korrin.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell us this beforehand? Estina asked.
‘Why? Would you change your mind now that you know?’
‘I…’ Estina faltered. Her scarlet lips pouted. ‘No. Of course not. It’s all just a bit sudden.’
‘You have all the time in the world, Knights.’
‘Some of us don’t, Wellen,’ said Demsin, the oldest of the group, a grey-haired woman from the island of Albion. Even though she was quicker than a lightning flash, and as agile as a dragonfly, she had sixty years under her belt. She was an old warrior, beginning to feel the ache in her bones.’
Wellen smiled again, wider this time. ‘You need not worry about age any more, Demsin. Nor do any of you. This armour will take care of that.’
‘Of what? Of…’ the words sounded silly in his mouth, Korrin thought, but he’d already begun. ‘…Age?’
‘Indeed,’ said the tawny man. That one deep, rumbling word was like a boulder crashing to the floor.
The nine swapped glances. It was a long while before any of them spoke. Balimuel was the first to step forward, his big boots clomping on the stone. He scratched his beard with a blue fingernail. ‘So,’ he began. ‘Which one is mine?’
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