Whispers of War: The War for the North: Book One

by Sean Rodden

  One hundred men did likewise.

  And in sincere humility, Axennus said softly, “We are in your debt, Shield Maiden. Ours lives are yours to command.”

  Silence ensued, broken only by horse-breath and heartbeat.

  Then, “Rise, Southmen,” spoke Caelle. Her voice was silken, serene. “I am unworthy of this gesture. I was not alone in securing your salvation, and will abide no talk of debt or service. I ask only for your friendship.”

  “That you most surely have,” avowed the Ambassador, face yet fixed to the road, “for as long as we play a part in the Teller’s Tale.”

  “Then rise, Men of the South,” the Shield Maiden commanded, “and accept the friendship of the Fiannar in return. Among friends, the well-being of one is sufficient reward to the other. All accounts are balanced.”

  The Men of the South rose, fists at their breasts.

  The Iron Captain stepped forward, his dark eyes flashing.

  “Nevertheless, Shield Maiden, you will ever have our swords.”

  “The day may yet come when they are needed, Captain,” Caelle responded cryptically. “But enough of this.” She turned to the fair Sarrane sitting silent and sedate atop her steed. “What say you, sister and Seer?”

  “The peril is passed,” answered Sarrane, her tone cool and somewhat removed. Staring to the east, the violet rings of her eyes spiraled like an eddy about isles of grey. “But another, great and terrible, is risen from ruin and calls for our doom.”

  “The thing you have foreseen?”

  Quietly, and with steely calm: “The very same.”

  An uncharacteristic frown shaded the beauty of the Shield Maiden’s brow as she declared, “These tidings must be borne to Druintir with all speed.”

  Softly, surprisingly, “My husband bore witness to the coming of this thing,” said Sarrane.

  Caelle’s scowl widened to an expression of shocked solicitude. “Master Tulnarron was there?”

  “He was.” A small pause, a swirling of violet. “He is unhurt, and hastens westward with riders of our House, but even at a gallop their mirarra will not gain Druintir for nigh two days. And I fear he will be…distracted.”

  Caelle turned to the Fiannian banner-bearers.

  “Radannan. Milutin. Bring the Seer to Lord Alvarion and his Lady. Slow for nothing and stop for less. Darkness descends upon us swiftly, and we must ever be swifter.”

  Grey and dour, the two Fiannar inclined their heads to the Shield Maiden, but spoke naught. Above them, the Golden Strype and the Flaming Sword rippled restlessly.

  Said Sarrane: “You will remain with the Southmen?”

  “I will, sister. I have said that they will not be abandoned. I will keep them behind my shield wherever they might go, until the danger is too distant to consider.”

  Sarrane did not gainsay her, but the anxiety of the Seer’s severe features was explicit.

  “Where will they go?”

  Before Caelle could reply, the Ambassador did so for himself and for the company of Southmen.

  “We go to Druintir,” he said casually, as though the matter had never been in question.

  Caelle’s raven tresses framed a face fraught with concern.

  “Ambassador Teagh, it is my suggestion that you return to Hiridith. Your life and the lives of these men will be imperiled in the north.”

  “Imperiled?” Axennus rubbed the smoothness of his chin in mock meditation. “Indeed.” The light in his hazel eyes danced playfully, as the insufferable imp within him rapidly revived. “Left Tenant Runningwolf!”

  The Rhelman moved to Axennus’ side. “Master Teagh.”

  “Would you be so good as to share with the Shield Maiden my thoughts on peril?”

  Runningwolf blinked slowly.

  Axennus could not have been sure, but he thought he detected rare laughter in the loamy light of the Left Tenant’s eyes.

  Then, his tone as dispassionate and as ineffusive as ever, the Rhelman explained, “Shield Maiden, the Ambassador believes that in the absence of peril, life would be decidedly…uninteresting.”

  Caelle looked from Runningwolf to Axennus – who was grinning like an idiot – then to Bronnus. The Iron Captain, his face clouded in irritation or embarrassment or both, only shook his head in helpless resignation.

  Then, at small length, Caelle laughed aloud. The sound was like silver rain on summer leaves.

  “It is said that only the brave and the foolish might laugh in the face of danger,” said she, smiling warmly. “You are no fool, friend Axennus. And you bring hope with you as surely as day follows night. It will pride the Fiannar to receive you and your party at Druintir.”

  Axennus’ flexible face deftly adopted a look of appropriate solemnity.

  “The honour will be ours, Shield Maiden.”

  Caelle turned to Sarrane.

  “We have delayed overlong,” she said, her tone matching the graveness she saw upon the austere Seer’s countenance. Then softly, little more than a whisper, “May the mirarra bear you swift and safe, sweet sister.”

  Sarrane nodded staidly. “And you also.”

  A look passed between them that spoke of love and of trust and of gratitude, of a sorority of souls, of bonds of friendship that could never be severed, come death, come doom.

  Then –

  “Ride!” cried the Shield Maiden. “Ei vech aphan! Druintir atinai! Dhir dri, mirarrai! Dhir!”

  Forth and north leapt three magnificent mounts, embodied strength and grace, flashing past the stretching shadows of Doomfall like argent lightning. Enamoured with their beauty, enchanted by their elegance, the Southmen watched them until they passed beyond scope of both eye and ear. Runningwolfs’s earthy eyes twinkled damply.

  Then the brothers Teagh, one to either side, came abreast of Caelle, Shield Maiden to the Lady of the House of Defurien. The men of the Ambassadorial Guard assembled behind them, a courageous company of bronze and steel and Erelian blue. The Iron Captain nodded in readiness.

  Grinned the Ambassador, “Shall we, Shield Maiden?”

  Darkness billowed into the sky, a great black mass rising from the earth, swelling, seething, from which ghastly grey tendrils reached across the blue firmament, writhing wraithlike, aloft and almost alive. Pale ash fluttered down, borne over the land on invisible thermal pinions, gliding groundward with a grace that belied the horror of its origin.

  The day was old when Tulnarron crested a soot-crusted knoll and cast his icy gaze westward and down. His countenance was grim, his teeth grinding in his clenched jaw. Beneath him, his great mirarran hoofed haughtily, nostrils flared, snorting.

  “It is as we feared, Tuln,” confirmed a Fiannian spearman at the Master’s shoulder as the troop of warriors from the House of Eccuron assembled along the ridge to either side of them. Ash dusted the colours of the Golden Strype and the Crimson Fist. “The hamlet burns.”

  Tulnarron wrinkled his nose against the acrid reek of smoke. He did not otherwise respond.

  Below, a shallow creek meandered lazily along the nadir of a broad valley, a forest of conifers and maple rearing on the northern shore, the remains of a small village riotously afire to the south. Of the two dozen wooden buildings that had comprised the hamlet, several were destroyed utterly and lay in blackened heaps, dense smoke issuing from cracks in the blackened char. Others still burned freely, the blaze hungrily devouring both plank and log, crackling and cackling as it fed its voracious appetite for destruction. Only a few structures had escaped the ravenous flames, standing rigid and scorched, like condemned souls awaiting inescapable damnation. Apart from the leaping flames, swirling smoke and floating ash, nothing moved.

  Haphazardly, amidst fire and ruin, small bundles of colour lay motionless in littered lanes and ravaged gardens. Slithering underneath the smell of wood smoke, Tulnarron detected the thin caustic stench of seared flesh.

  “Corpses,” observed the spearman, chewing on an unlit cheroot.

  “I am not blind, Gorn.” Tulnarro
n’s mighty fists crunched about his mirarran’s reins. “Nor have my olfactory abilities entirely abandoned me.”

  Gornannon said nothing.

  The Fiannar lining the ridge sat astride their mirarra in solemn silence.

  “This place was called Maple Creek,” said Tulnarron, his voice uncharacteristically wistful, distant. “Eleven families. Some seventy souls. Many children.”

  “The little ones called you ‘Sheriff’,” recalled another of the Fiannar, a woman, a wetness slicking the surface of her eyes, welling at the corners.

  Tulnarron’s heart was torn between raging and breaking, the inner conflict outwardly contorting his countenance. His cheeks quivered under the cold ice chips of his eyes.

  Teller forfend. The children. Red-headed Ceilagh, strapping young Rion. And the little twins...a boy and a girl, gold of locks and blue-eyed, always so happy, always laughing…what were their names?

  “I have been remiss in my shrieval duties, Sandarre. Reprehensibly so.”

  “You could not have known, cousin,” comforted the Fiann, somehow forestalling her voice from faltering. “Even the Mistress of our House did not foresee…this.”

  Tulnarron’s jaws bunched.

  I cannot so much as remember their names.

  “Even so.”

  Across the sluggish stream, in the concealing eaves of the forest, half-buried in black soil and discarded fir needles, two sets of wide wild eyes stared out from shadow up at the grim grey warriors lining the distant ridge. A stifled whimper. One small hand reached out to another, tiny fingers entwining, gripping tightly.

  Hush.

  They will see us, sister.

  Nay, brother. They will not.

  They are Fiannar. They will know we are here, know we are here.

  They are distracted.

  What if they find us, sister? They will know us. They will know what we are, what we are. We are yet too weak to fight them. They will hurt us, hurt us.

  Their leader is a simple brute. All sword and no substance. He is hurried. We are hidden. We will not be found.

  They are descending! They come, sister! They come, come, come!

  Silence. Remain still. We will not be discovered. They will be gone soon.

  But, sister –

  Hush, brother.

  In pairs and small groups, dour Deathward warriors of the House of Eccuron guided their mounts guardedly through the wreckage of the hamlet of Maple Creek. Some led mirarra by the reins and on foot, others remained astride their steeds. Smoke and dust wafted about them, irritating their eyes, assaulting their nostrils. Heat singed their skin. All was silent but for the low roar of flame, the hiss of boiling sap, the crackle of burning wood.

  Tulnarron rode slowly along the main way, cold eyes scouring the ground, the ruins, the smoke-spawned shadows. The body of a man lay twisted in a heap, naked, the eye sockets empty, gaping mouth awash in blood. The corpse had no tongue. Tulnarron suspected it yet grasped its eyes in the bloodied balls of its fists. Upon one side of the lane a large hound, or the remnants of one, was scattered in several red chunks of wet flesh across the ground. The beast had literally been torn to pieces. An old woman’s decapitated head watched Tulnarron through dead white eyes from the lip of the community well.

  Everywhere, the carcasses of animals, the corpses of men, women, children.

  “The red wind did this,” accused Gornannon, spitting his cheroot into nearby flames. “These village folk were driven mad by terror. Their minds broke. That which they could not kill, they burned. And then they destroyed themselves.”

  Sandarre peered down sorrowfully upon the ruin of what had once been a pretty young woman. Before dying, the maiden had torn her hair from her head and clawed her face to shreds. Nevertheless, Sandarre knew her.

  “Her name was Morgynne. She had seen but sixteen summers. She was to marry in the spring.”

  Gornannon simply shook his head.

  Tulnarron did not respond. His mirarran’s ears had twitched, the magnificent head turning westward, silver eyes focused and fixed on something through the haze of smoke and gliding cinder. The Master’s own inner sense had been alerted simultaneously, his own steely gaze riveted now upon the gusting smoke before him. Wordlessly, Sandarre nudged her mount to Tulnarron’s left side, Gornannon moving to the right.

  And then the smoke parted.

  There, on the soot-spoiled path, stood a ghoulish figure. A woman. Of middling age. Her plain face begrimed with blood and filth, her simple shift soiled and in tatters, her swollen breasts hanging in pink ribbons of rent flesh. In one hand she held the haft of a wood-splitting maul, the other gripped the ankle of an infant, its doll-like body mangled almost beyond recognition. A ghastly grin split the matron’s face, and she raised the baby’s battered form toward the three Fiannar. The little skull had been caved in and was dripping grey gore to the ground before the woman’s bare feet. The matron threw back her head and shrieked maddened laughter to the heavens.

  The infant’s body twitched.

  “Show mercy,” commanded the Master of the House of Eccuron.

  Instantly, Gornannon’s spear sailed straight into the madwoman’s heart, even as an arrow from Sandarre’s bow pierced that of the hapless child. Both dropped dead in the dust.

  Tulnarron stared for a moment. He closed his eyes. Lowered his head. Exhaled. Raised his head. Opened his eyes. Then turned away.

  “These people were of Rothic blood, were they not, cousin?” the Master asked of Sandarre as Gornannon went to retrieve the thrown spear.

  “For the greater part. Some Erelian. Perhaps a drop of Nothiring here and there.”

  “The Roths and the Erelians burn their dead.”

  “As do the Nothirings, though they do so at sea.”

  Tulnarron gazed westward, his heart simultaneously haughty and heavy. His broad, square shoulders sagged slightly. Inexplicably, both the rillagh across his breast and the greatsword in its harness at his back seemed to weigh a ton.

  “There are many more homesteads and villages between here and Druintir.”

  “I suspect there will be many more…like this,” said Sandarre sadly.

  The Master of the House of Eccuron fell silent briefly.

  Priority precedes pride. Even so.

  Then, “We will ride hard. We will send riders to all our kin. Arrenhoth will answer this. The House of Eccuron will visit every village between here and Druintir. None will be forgotten. None will be forsaken.”

  Sandarre nodded silently.

  Gornannon rejoined them then, his steel spearhead freshly cleaned yet gleaming a gaudy scarlet in the sheen cast by the fires. Some blood, it seemed, can never be washed away.

  “We will gather the dead,” decreed Tulnarron, his demeanor determined and decidedly martial. “We will pray for the repose of their souls. And then we will burn them all.”

  “As you command, Master Tulnarron,” answered Gornannon and Sandarre in solemn unison.

  And then Tulnarron tugged the reins of his mount, once, twice, and urged his majestic mirarran away.

  He failed to mark that the ears of his silver-eyed steed had for some time been turned in earnest toward the woods across the creek.

  The forms of two small children emerged from the eaves of the forest and walked hand-in-hand to the pebbled bank of the brook. Their round cherubic faces were grubby and soiled, their golden curls plastered to their skulls beneath a pitch of peat and pine needles. But for abundant dirt and grime both were naked, their bodies entirely hairless, the young girl’s small breasts barely beginning to bud. Matching sets of bright blue eyes peered past masks of muck and mud, gazing westward into the setting sun.

  They are gone, brother.

  Gone, gone.

  We must wait now.

  Wait for our master, wait, wait.

  Not our master, brother. Our summoner. And he will not come. He cowers in the deeps of the earth. No, he will not come. But his armies will.

  I’m hungry,
hungry.

  Did you not devour the human child’s soul?

  No, sister. The child escaped me, its soul slipped away, slipped away. But I claim the shell. The shell is mine, mine.

  The human girl is gone as well. I know not where. It matters not. The shell will suffice.

  I’m hungry, so hungry.

  As am I, brother. These shells require sustenance. We must eat.

  I feel, sister. I feel, feel, feel.

  Yes, these corporeal forms are wonders. All sensation is magnified. So brutally primal. So intense.

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

  The little girl’s azure gaze swept casually across the creek to the smoking ruins of the village. At its centre, a mound of carcasses burned, the sweet reek of cooking flesh rising to greet the falling night.

  Let us feast, brother. And then I would have you make use of me.

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

  4

  IN THE SHADOW OF DRAGONS

  “A man looks upon a Dragon and sees a monster,

  a terrible beast, a fearsome fiend of terror and fire.

  Tell me, what does the Dragon see?”

  Majan al Khan, White Mage to the Turian Emperor

  They passed Doomfall in silence.

  Dark was the shroud of Eryn Drun, a veil of murkish mists that seethed and swirled like a living thing, baleful and brooding. The company skirted the haze, men and mounts warily scanning the vapours and ash for possible peril. The quietude of the place was persistent, pervasive, broken only by the intermittent hiss of heat released from the netherearth and by the hollow clap of hoof on stone. Nothing moved within the roiling earthborn fog, but many among the company could not shake the tingling sensation that they were not passing Doomfall unseen.

  “There are eyes in the mist,” stated Runningwolf prosaically, as they moved beyond the grasp of Doomfall’s most northerly tendrils. He did not elaborate.

  Hearing the Rhelman, the Iron Captain directed an enquiring look to Caelle, but the Shield Maiden only smiled blithely and said nothing.

  Marking Caelle’s reticence on the matter, Axennus restrained his own innate curiosity, stowing his queries for a later time, and of the fog-fettered Pass of the Guard no more was said.