Whispers of War: The War for the North: Book One
Page 57
Axennus saw the first gloaming of dawn rise deep and red in the farthest east, the earth bleeding into the heavens from some hideous hurt in her heart, her life leaking westward across a stricken sky.
A red dawn.
Such a sunrise bodes danger to the traveler.
A chill shivered Axennus’ spine as he recalled the Rhelman’s words.
The wind sleeps, but does not die.
And a dark wind woke and rose in the east, hastening westward on howling, bloodied wings.
We must beware the wind’s return.
Dawn broke in a burst of bloodlight over the Seven Hills.
Peril awaits us, Master Teagh.
And then Axennus saw the thing that had been lacking. Saw the army of the Blood King amassed there under the ruddy light of ruby dawn, upon the frosted grasses of the Northern Plains. Saw the immensity of that army, its sheer and utter monstrousness. He saw, and wished that he had not, for doubt and darkness then gnawed his heart as surely as a leech sucks the blood from the vein.
Less than a league before the scarlet-stained slopes of the Seven Hills, beneath banners crimson and cruel, the Blood King’s army was assembled, its vastness encompassing the entirety of the eastern vista for as far as Axennus’ mortal eyes could discern. An ocean of enemies. Thousands upon uncounted thousands. Foes arisen from the darkest realms of nightmare. Fiends. Beasts. Demons. Barbarians. Evil incarnated into the most massive army the Southman had ever seen.
Before that enormous force, the mustered might of the Fiannar and their allies seemed so small, inconsequential, ineffectual.
But the Erelian Commander knew better than to delve into the depths of despair, and soon and swiftly did doubt and darkness desert him.
For he saw another thing.
Alvarion, son of Amarien, Master of the House of Defurien and Twelfth Lord of the Fiannar, urged his great grey mirarran from beneath the proud pennons of his House and his folk, forward through silently parting ranks of the Grey Watch and dour Deathward warriors.
Alone rode Alvarion, the pristine metal of his winged helm and the glittering gold of his rillagh catching and cleansing the crimson rays of the befouled sun, sending them forth once more, glorious and golden.
Alone rode the Lord of the Fiannar, cantering out upon the Plains, his cloak and hair flying about him like the very wings of war.
Alone he rode across the frost-greyed grasses, drawing ever nearer to the foremost enemy line, calling his mount to a halt just beyond bowshot.
Alone he sat there astride his steed, strangely serene in his stillness and his silence, a rendering in stone but for the windmade movement of cape and mane. There he remained in rigid and resolute defiance of the Darkness that had come to devastate his land and destroy his people.
And alone did he then hoist his golden sword high, becking her ablaze in a voice of strident thunder. And the golden fire of the Lord’s blade flamed like the fury of avenging gods, and in his cry was the wrath of each and every Lord that had gone before him. Verily, the battle-call of Cothra himself was a thing less terrible.
Somewhere far away the soulless spirit of the Blood King trembled in its dark demesne.
And then came silence.
Deceptively peaceful. Deceivingly pure.
The poignant still that heralds the storm.
And then the rolling peal of drums rocked the world. Pounding, pounding, as though seeking to shatter the very earth. Booming, booming, like the last quaking of tectonic plates at the breaking of the world. And then came another sound, a screech so heinous that it might shred the ear, a shriek so dreadful as to rend the heart and rip the sturdiest of souls.
And the host of the Blood King moved.
And so, at last, the thing that breaks the bravest of hearts, that destroys men in the thousands of thousands, that lays waste to civilizations and wreaks ruin on worlds, came to Eryn Ruil. The thing that the greatest of gods do dread, the thing cherished by demons for the pain it promises, for the evil it permits, for the annihilation it allows, descended upon the Seven Hills of Lindannan. The thing that even the Teller is ever loath to speak of in his Tale for the sorrow it sows and the harvest of shining souls it reaps – this foul and fatal thing at long last came beneath a bleeding sun to fall upon the fair fell folk of the Fiannar.
The thing that should never happen.
The thing that should never be.
The thing called –
WAR.
EPILOGUE
“The angel Hope and the demon Fear
both reside here,
in this place so dreadful and strange,
combative cohabitants of the
e’er-whirling sphere
the Teller of the Tale calls Change.”
Omereo, Tranformations and Transpositions
Pale sunsheen fell on the fog over the Ford of Findarron, casting the nascent morn in a monolight of ghostly grey. Autumnal frost silvered and stiffened the grasses, and slicked the stones of the shoreline with a thin skin of ice. And the ghosts of departed night fled along the fogbound banks of the North March, the muted murmur of the river mimicking the sound of phantasmal fetters rattling on rock, the wind awhisper with the sad song of shamed and sorry souls flying from the light.
In agile imaginations, such a drear and dismal dawn gave easy rise to plentitudes of spectres and restless spirits.
The young goatherd marshaled his meagre trip of goats through the mist toward the water’s edge, leading his bleating charges to drink just below the shallows the local folk called Findy’s Ford. Long ago a terrible battle had been fought there, he had been told. The superstitious held the place to be haunted. The boy knew better. He feared more tangible things, such as the land to the north. North of the river lay lands unknown, lands that did not fall under the rule of Republican law and order. North was the Wild.
The young goatherd frowned, wondering what twisted things haunted and hunted in the haze of the northern shore. He glanced to the brightening sky. He had heard rumour of winged demons over the prairie. He had dismissed the tale, for he knew that his friends were oft overly fanciful. He was the rational one, the logical one.
He lowered his gaze, glowered at the fog.
The mist was moving. Altering. Becoming something more than it had been.
Things were changing.
His father had at long last entrusted him with the herd, thirty-or-so long-haired goats, mostly white, a few tans, two greys, one black. The harvest was done, but the animals would graze until the grass was browned beneath its veneer of frost. His older brothers were away with the Legion. Only he remained to tend the trip. The herd had become his responsibility. Understandably so, as he was the sensible one. It was his first time, alone with the goats. Some among his friends would surely find some humour in that.
The goats grazed, the river ran, the wind rose white and chill.
And things changed.
The ghosts came.
They approached the Fords of Findarron without hesitation. Proudly, arrogantly. Horses. Hundreds of horses. Twenty hundred horses. Twenty hundred riders. Blue and bronze, bold and strong.
They should not have been there, the young goatherd knew. Not there. Not then. They had been disbanded. They were no more.
How was it that they were there?
There. Then.
A double blue standard rippled above the riders like a strip of the morning sky. Flapping in the risen wind. Dark blue over light. The banner of a brigade long defunct. Long gone. No more. Disbanded. Defamed. Worse – forgotten.
Dead – yet not.
The Ghost Brigade.
They would not believe him, he knew. Not his friends, those who spun fantastic stories of winged and wicked fiends from hell. Not his father, now. Not his brothers, later. His sister, perhaps, though she was but three and would believe anything. His mother, yes, were she yet living.
The Ghost Brigade. A power of the past. There. Then. Blue and bronze and bold and gold. Spears bristl
ing, armour glistering, horses huffing great clouds into the cold morning mist. Crossing the Fords, riding northward. Two thousand strong.
And at their head a dark-skinned heathen upon a brilliant white steed from the very fields of heaven.
The mist swirled, faded, fell. The day brightened. The ghosts passed. North into the Wild. And were gone.
The boy lowered his eyes. No one would believe him.
And so he would tell no one.
The War For The North
concludes in…
Book Two:
Roars Of War
Available soon!
Visit Whispers of War on Facebook
www.facebook.com/whispersofwar