by Sean Rodden
Briefly, the Lord of the Fiannar allowed his eyes to stray to the bright gold of the Colossus’ rillagh and blade, taking comfort and staking hope in the fact that Grimroth was yet in the hands of a son of the House of Defurien, in the hands of his uncle – grim, grey Eldurion.
They did not tarry there, for though the miles were few, the going was slow and tedious. Twenty thousand men and nearly half as many horses move not swiftly over narrow ways and close ground. The day aged, and the sun was well into its long descent when Lord Alvarion led the Fiannar and their friends into the deep green halfdark of the Fend.
When they emerged from the verdure and nettle-strewn nearness of ancient Faendomin, dusk had fallen, and night threatened like silent thunder from the east. They were met upon the flowered Field of Cedorrin by an uncharacteristically fatigued Tulnarron and his stalwart Host of Arrenhoth, and there was blood on their blades and death in their eyes. The Master of the House of Eccuron spoke in low tones with his Lord, and soon cheers arose from the ranks of the Deathward as details traveled of the destruction wrought upon the enemy munitions trucks and supply train. All but two of the Host’s mirarra had returned with their riders seated upon rather than slumped across their backs; those warriors of the House of Eccuron who had not accompanied the Host roared with pride and the promise of revenge.
First blood.
First victory.
“Of this you are certain, Master Tulnarron?”
The huge Fian nodded wearily, his cold grey eyes regarding the Lord of the Fiannar somewhat blearily. His breath streamed like smoke into the algid air of descendent dusk. Beneath him, the froth-drenched flanks of his mirarran heaved heavily. Unbroken days and nights, hours upon hours of constant, relentless running battles with the enemy vanguard in effort to retard and delay the Blood King’s army’s final forced march had drawn and drained Tulnarron’s vast reserves, had enervated the warriors of his House and pushed them toward exhaustion, had sorely tested the limits of even the mighty mirarra.
“Leeches, yes,” the Master verified, his voice low, slow, almost laboured. “There was no lie in this Kor ben Dor’s words, nor any reason for one.”
“Even less cause to speak the truth, I should think,” muttered Alvarion. Beneath him, his mirarran shifted slightly, as though the beast somehow sensed his unease. “And these Leeches are in the guise of children?”
Tulnarron grimaced as one might for a hidden hurt, ducking even, almost like he had been struck. Recovering himself, “So spoke the Prince of the Bloodspawn. The little girl shall lead the assault upon the Seven Hills; the boy and the Bloodspawn strike for Doomfall. I have already sent word to Drogul.”
Alvarion studied the Master of the House of Eccuron momentarily.
“Prince, is it? It is unlike you to give such credence to an enemy.”
Tulnarron blinked blurrily. “He seemed…familiar.”
“Oh? How so?”
The tired Master managed a wry smile. “Well, I have thought on it, Lord. And if you must know…he reminded me of you.”
Alvarion stared at Tulnarron for one heartbeat, two. Then, despite himself, he laughed abruptly.
“That being so, I am surprised you considered him credible at all.”
Tulnarron scowled, then shrugged. “I deserve that, I suppose.”
Alvarion reached out, settled one strong hand upon Tulnarron’s broad shoulder.
“I am glad, Master Tulnarron, that you…found something to do.” The Lord withdrew his hand, reined his mount about. “Take some rest now – you will find much more to do come morning.”
Tulnarron grinned, and blood shone on his teeth.
“Even so.”
The forces of the Free Nations set camp upon the flowered slopes of Cedorrin, while the indefatigable Fiannar rode to the foot of the Field, into the broad mouth between Sentinel Ridge and the Warwatch. Those rocky rises loomed bleak and black into the falling night, like sentries of soaring stone, all-seeing, unsleeping. A few phantasmal figures of the Grey Watch descended Sentinel Ridge in haste and hurried to their Marshal at the shoulder of Lord Alvarion. More low words were spoken, and soon the Deathward were riding hard and hurriedly to the three grassy hills of Eryn Ruil.
Then, as the black hand of night took the Seven Hills in its deep dark grasp, a second cry of terrible joy burst from the breasts of the Fiannar, and the Lord of that fell and fearsome folk held high his blade and called her aflame.
For there, strung along the troika of grassy hummocks and the vales that lay between, stood a single line of massive figures, darker than the fallen night and equally ubiquitous and unyielding. They faced eastward, their broad backs to the Fiannar and their friends, to the Field and to the Fend. They confronted the night, the black, and the deeper dark that lurked therein – the Shadow that had come from the east. They made no motion. Unmoving. Immovable. Statues hewn of stone and steel. And though they numbered no more than fifty, and the spaces between each and the next were measured in strong stone-throws rather than in strides, the figures seemed to form a wall so impervious, so impenetrable, so impassable that no foe might ever breach it.
Despite the immediacy of the enemy, the Deathward and their allies could rest in comfort that night, knowing that they were well-warded, that the only danger they might encounter before dawn was that which dwelt in the dark of their dreams.
For the mighty Daradur had come to the Seven Hills.
He had been given many titles:
Lord of Doomfall. Chieftain of the Wandering Guard. Captain of Captains. Kor uri Korr. Master of Raku Ulrun. Lord of the Axe. Kiruntar. The Mighty One.
Yet he had but one name –
Drogul.
The greatest Darad ever Made stood within the soot-black socket of the Dragon’s Head’s southmost eye, his own ebon eyes blacker still, the dual darknesses of death and doom glittering in their immeasurable depths. A chill white wind huffed, whistling shrilly through the huge high hollows, driving cloud before it to billow like angry smoke from the dead eyes of the Dragon. Drogul’s black gaze followed the fog as it crawled from the Dragon’s Head, down the scarred stone face of the beast, seeing it settle upon the hard lands before the Pass of the Guard, watching it mix and meld there with the hot vapourous breath of Mother Earth, then slink eastward across the Northern Plains.
There, a thousand paces from the gash in the night and stone that was Doomfall, the fogged fields were dappled with thousands of opaque orange specks flickering feebly in the haze. Quickly calculating the number of fires and the distances between, Drogul evaluated the strength of the enemy that had come to destroy him at Doomfall. And that strength was truly terrible.
Twenty thousand.
Iron-armoured Unmen of Waldard. Powerful Urkroks. Gargantuan Graniants. And great grey giants that Drogul had not yet met in battle, had neither seen nor heard of before Tulnarron had sent word with the throkka. Bloodspawn, they named themselves. And their leader, Kor ben Dor. Impressive, Tulnarron had called him. Impressive. High praise from the Master of the House of Eccuron. Drogul could only guess the might of this Kor ben Dor, of the fiends that were the Bloodspawn, but he was certain that it was tremendous indeed. Not that it mattered.
Twenty thousand.
More.
The Mighty One moved his gaze to gap of Doomfall, where his own force was gathered in the gloom, keeping a calm and confident vigil on the vapour-bound night. Fewer than one hundred Wandering Guard.
One hundred.
Less.
Drogul felt a hot and powerful presence behind him, and rage and madness seemed to burn the blackness at his back. He summoned Dulgar to his side with the slight shrug of one massive shoulder.
The Wild One grinned through a fiery mane of hair and beard at the spectacle of the foe so far below them, and an insane hunger crimsoned the black of his solitary eye.
“Mundar would suggest we surround the mudfuckers,” Dulgar grated, his great bare chest rumbling with conjoined humour and wrath.
&nb
sp; Drogul nodded stiffly, but said nothing. Warder Mundar of Duldarad was not there – he awaited the Lady of the Fiannar somewhere south of Galledine. His axes would be badly missed.
As would Rundul’s.
And Brulwar’s hammer also.
Eastward, far beyond the furthest marches of the Northern Plains, a deep dark redness leaked languidly into the black of night, like blood seeping from a festering wound in the world. Night was dying. Dawn approached. Death was coming.
Death and doom.
“We should go down, kor uri Korr,” declared Dulgar, an odd urgency, a certain need to his tone. War and battle and killing defined the one-eyed Captain. Sometimes he seemed but an animated extension of his bloodthirsty axe. “Our brothers wait for us. Fuck.”
Drogul nodded once more, still said nothing.
A crack in the earth’s crust called Doomfall.
Twenty thousand foes.
One hundred mara Waratur.
The Mighty One hefted his great black war-axe to his wolfskin-mantled shoulder, and turned to begin the long dark descent down the Dragon’s Head. In a voice that rumbled like boulders rolling in the heart of the earth, the laconic Chieftain repeated the very same oath he so recently had given his Fiannian friends in Hollin Tharric.
Three words.
Simply spoken. Indisputable. Irrefutable.
Three words that enticed a laval tear-stream of blood from beneath the worn black iron of Dulgar’s eyepatch.
“Doomfall will hold.”
Axennus laboured up the steep pinnacle of the Warwatch. The going was arduous and difficult, made worse by the deep dark of a night that knew but little light of either moon or star. The path – an obscenely charitable description in the Commander’s estimation – was narrow and winding, oft slippery underfoot where the rock was greased with moss and black frost, and in places he found it necessary to pull himself up to the next stone shelf of the incline by strength of arms rather than of legs. In other places, where the face of the Warwatch was essentially vertical, Axennus was forced to splay like a spider clinging to the stone, inching himself upward by utilizing the smallest of handholds and footholds.
The way was called Dead Man’s Climb – a most apt and likely literal name.
Axennus clambered, scrambled, scraped and clawed his way up the Climb, grittily determined, minutes seeming like hours, until at long last he achieved the summit of the soaring stone of the Warwatch. Outwardly relieved, he slowed his quickened breath, brushed his cloak smooth and frowned at the marks scoring the bronze of his greaves. With some reluctance, he unclasped the rope and harness that his taciturn guide had insisted he wear.
Two warders of the Grey Watch looked upon him with pale, placid eyes.
One appeared significantly older than the other, his hewn, once handsome features become hard, almost haggard. He was seated in an odd metal chair with large wheels for back legs and small ones on the front, his grey woolen cloak bundled loosely over his lower body. By the formation of the cloak’s folds, Axennus guessed the man had lost both lower limbs at the knees.
The other Watcher was tall and lean and as straight as a spear. He seemed very young, younger than Axennus. His hair was fair, his eyes sparkling and bright, the small sardonic smile upon his full lips appeared permanently fixed as he coiled the rope that had been attached to the Southman’s harness. His features were flat and flawless, the kind of face that causes men to bridle with envy and makes women swoon.
A scuffling sound behind Axennus, and Harlastian of the Grey Watch vaulted lithely over a natural parapet in the rock. The warder was unwinded by the climb, the bare blade in his belt and the rillagh across his breast flashing faintly in the cloud-filtered moonlight. He shrugged out from the straps of a fairly ponderous pack, knelt, neatly arranging the pack’s contents on the peak’s wind-smoothened floor. Some meagre provisions, a collection of various coloured pennons, several plates of polished steel.
“A long climb,” Axennus complained, his chest heaving.
“The way down is faster, Southman,” replied Harlastian evenly. “Much faster.”
The Commander grinned grimly. “I’m not sure what that means, exactly, and even less sure that I’m looking forward to it.”
“I will not allow you to fall, Southman. Lord Alvarion would be… displeased.”
Axennus grimaced. “My confidence in you knows no bounds, Watchcaptain.”
“Nor should it. You will be safely back with your company before the battle begins – for whatever that is worth.” Harlastian jerked his chin. “These are Silmarien and Spedamon of the Grey Watch.”
The young Watcher flashed a smile that would outshine even the most brilliant of Axennus’ efforts.
The warder in the wheeled chair nodded. His neck creaked.
“Call me ‘Speedy’,” he insisted, his ancient voice pocked with irony.
“I am Axennus Teagh, Commander of the North March Mounted Reserve.”
“The March Fox of the Ghost Brigade,” said Silmarien, still smiling. “I am honoured.”
“Don’t let that go to your head, Southman,” muttered Speedy. “The boy honours very easily.”
“Forgive the old man,” smiled Silmarien. “He’s been sitting in that chair too long. It has made him combative and overly competitive. He refuses to concede that he will never get a leg up on me.”
“Careful, boy. It’s a long way down,” grunted Speedy as he wheeled over to inspect Harlastian’s collection of signal flags and mirrors.
A wink and a nod, and Silmarien followed.
Axennus managed an awkward half-grin, cast a quick look the Watchcaptain’s way. The Fian only shrugged dismissively.
“Have a look around, Southman.”
The apex of the Warwatch was roughly circular and somewhat concave in shape, a little less than thirty yards in diameter, the rock floor curving toward a high stone lip that ringed the summit like a round rampart carved by wind and time. At the center of the circle was a tall pyramid of piled timber from which came the slight pungent scents of tar and oil – a beacon of warning, long disused and unignited. And now superfluous, as the Fiannar had been only too aware of the advance of the enemy.
To the north, the Warwatch fell vertically to the white-crested wash of the Ruil, the river’s rush and roar dulled to a quiet rumble for the sheer height of the pinnacle’s titanic rock.
To west, past and below the blackened mass of the Fend, Axennus caught the pale golden sheen of the Colossus’ upraised blade, though Defurien’s gargantuan stone likeness was itself invisible in the aging night.
Southward, small and barely visible in the darkness, men and horses were moving in close formation through the nightbound gap between the Warwatch and Sentinel Ridge, assembling about their lords and the banners of their nations on the flats at the western feet of Eryn Ruil’s three grassy rises.
Behind the southmost hill, beneath the cloud-weakened gleam of moon and star, the Sunburst of Rothanar, the Emerald Trefoil of her High King, and the Black Hand of the caelroth fluttered proudly in rebellious defiance of the dark.
At the back of the central hill, the Three Lions of Ithramis waved almost winsomely in the whisking wind of night.
And behind the northern hill flew the Scarlet Serpent of Nothira, ever hungry for battle and blood.
Axennus nodded to himself in satisfaction. The three hills effectively concealed the presence of the Fiannar’s allies from enemy eyes. The foe need not have knowledge beforehand of the strength gathered to oppose them. Surprise and the intentional stimulation of over-confidence in the enemy, the Commander knew, were oft sharper weapons in war than any blade forged of steel.
Atop the crests, along the slopes and in the vales of the three hills were mustered most of the might of the Deathward.
The defiant Crimson Fist of the mighty House of Eccuron and the Raging Bull of the House of Cilcannan marked the southern rise.
The bold banners of the Houses of Dalorion and Mirmaddon, and of Ser
ra-Collean and Shon Roidain flapped from the crown of the northmost mound.
And from the central hill flew the noble Golden Strype of the Fiannar, flanked by the unadorned and colourless standard of the Grey Watch and the fiery Flaming Sword of the great House of Defurien.
And somewhere before the Hills were hidden fifty hammers and axes of the Wandering Guard under the command of broad black Brulwar of Dangmarth.
Axennus could not see the hundred riders of the Republican Legion’s fabled North March Mounted Reserve led by the unconquerable Iron Captain. But he knew where they were, where they waited. He would join them soon enough.
The Erelian Commander swept his gaze over the landscape once more.
The only thing lacking was the enemy.
Harlastian made a vague gesture with one hand toward a shadowed corner of the eastern parapet, and Axennus moved his attention there. He sensed more than saw the figure standing there, a phantasm in the night, long-limbed and tall, cloakless in the chill, eerily ethereal. And then he heard the soft sad song of bells, and marked the pale curved sheen of polished ivory at the figure’s back – and he knew Thrannien, Lord of the Sun Knights of the Athair, stood with them atop the Warwatch.
Axennus and Harlastian moved toward the Sun Lord, each to a side. They followed the Ath’s golden gaze out into the eastern night. Harlastian’s lips parted for that which he saw there – parted but made no sound. Axennus observed that the Fian’s hand had curled quietly about the pommel of his naked sword. The Southman squinted eastward, but he saw nothing save the night, bleak and black.
“They have come?” he wondered in little more than a whisper.
Thrannien nodded.
Harlastian withdrew his blade from his belt.
Neither spoke.
The Commander shared his companions’ silence, the trio standing stern and still in the dying night, like statues wrought of the stuff of shadow. They watched. They waited. And night passed like the fleeing soul of dead god.
