by Tom Lloyd
The boy froze, unsure, incapable of saying to this huge white-eye’s face that he disbelieved the Menin lord. After a moment he lowered his eyes and nodded.
‘Good. Now go back to your family’s rooms and tell your family that in a few minutes the stonedun won’t have any guards. That means you will be able to do what you like, but it’s not going to be much fun on the streets tonight. I suggest you all stay quiet and safe. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then nod once more if I just keep on going up this main stair to reach the general’s chambers, and go back to your rooms.’ Styrax watched the boy bob quickly and scramble away. He straightened and replaced his helm.
‘Right, no unnecessary commotion here. Kohrad, take Gaur’s crossbows and go ahead. You can see well enough to get both guards?’
Kohrad nodded and sheathed his own sword, the flames from the blade licking at the gold band on the scabbard for another heartbeat before dissipating. He accepted one of Gaur’s crossbows, loaded it with ease as the general did the other, then turned and began padding softly up the steps, both crossbows leveled and ready. Styrax followed close behind, weaving a simple spell to bind the tunnel’s shadows around his son.
The darkly flickering armour melted into the murky surrounds and Kohrad turned up the last corridor without hesitation. Styrax caught sight of the two drowsy, bored guards over his son’s shoulder only just before Kohrad shot them, one following the other so swiftly that the second man didn’t even have time to see why his companion had grunted before a bolt hit him in the throat. Styrax stepped over the corpses to the closed iron-bound door.
More sloppiness, he thought to himself as he realised the door was too thick to allow the sound to travel. I would hope for better from my own army than this. Don’t tell me they let the old man claim he’d catch a chill and allowed their numbers be divided the night before he was damn well scheduled for execution? Haven’t they even contemplated someone attempting a rescue?
He drew a breath and hefted Kobra. The strange, fanged blade was pitch-black colour - except after it had killed, when it took on a deep red sheen. Styrax had always considered it a hateful weapon, too eager to drink the blood of those he killed. Unfortunately, that also made it the most powerful sword he’d come across, with the exception of that wielded by Koezh Vukotic, the last weapon forged by the Elf king Aryn Bwr, which was filled with last king’s grief at the assassination of his son.
‘Styrax could have taken that sword as he watched Koezh Vukotic’s corpse putrefy and disintegrate, but it had rejected him. There was not enough loss in his soul, he suspected. After he’d touched the blade with his scarred hand, Styrax hadn’t wanted it either - so much pain would eat its way into a man, and that power was not worth the high price demanded. A long time ago he had been told that he would have to take everything he had, that nothing would be given freely to the Saviour he was to become. That suited Styrax, even after he’d rejected the dubious honour. He had earned his ‘gifts’, and bore no debt to the Gods because of them.
Kicking the door off its hinges, Styrax stormed dramatically into the room, almost colliding with the guard who had jumped up from his chair and was still fumbling for his sword. Styrax scanned the room quickly, then swung Kobra up to meet the second soldier’s axe which was crashing down towards his hip. The force of his blow drove the man back and Styrax stepped away to give himself space to swing his broadsword properly, removing the man’s head in a shower of blood and shattered bone. The other guard had regained his feet, but he barely had time to raise his own weapon before he found himself spitted on Styrax’s sword. The magical blade pierced the centre of his cuirass and pinned him, whimpering, to the wall. Stepping close, Styrax snapped the man’s neck to finish him off quickly, and left the sword jammed in the stone, feeding greedily.
He took stock of the living: two women cowered near the bed, obviously terrified, while a young unarmed Chetse soldier by the window looked almost frozen on the point of running forward. Styrax ignored them all and walked to the bedside, where an elderly man had raised himself up on his elbows. His only reaction was to raise an eyebrow at the newcomer, though the effect was somewhat spoiled by the thick grey bandage wrapped around his head.
‘Ah, General Dev,’ Styrax said graciously. ‘I hear you’re scheduled for execution in the morning.’
‘Lord Styrax.’ Chote Dev acknowledged his fellow soldier. ‘I had suspected as much - but it appears that is no longer the case.’
Styrax paused and stared down at the man. ‘Well now, that rather depends on you,’ he replied gravely. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed as Kohrad and Gaur arrived at the open doorway. ‘You are no fool, and running a guerrilla campaign at your age would be rather taxing. I think you’d enjoy an easy retirement - and I don’t actually want to have to kill you and all your family in a most unpleasant fashion. It would be a tedious waste for both of us.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Dev, sounding puzzled. The ageing general was not best pleased to be at so great a disadvantage when speaking to his people’s conqueror, but he was, as Styrax had gambled, a considered and cautious leader. The Menin agents in Thotel all agreed the general was one of the few men Lord Chalat had paid any attention to at all.
Styrax leaned forward. ‘It’s simple. Your reputation precedes you, both as a warrior, and as a man of honour. To execute you is unnecessary, as well as detrimental to my position here. I have shattered the Thotel legions. Soon I will defeat those coming from the remaining free cities.’ The massive white-eye held up a hand as the general began to protest. ‘My intention has always been one of conquest, not slaughter. I have no desire to destroy the Chetse people - I am no Dervek Grast.’
Styrax didn’t bother concealing the scorn in his voice, and he could see the effect it had on the general. Most Menin revered Grast, despite the man’s terrible acts - trying to wipe out the Litse hadn’t been his only crime, just his most notable. History had many monsters, yet outside the Ring of Fire, where the Menin lived, few names were as reviled as Grast’s.
‘And so-?’
‘And so I see no need to further insult the wounded pride of the Chetse by murdering the man who is the epitome of traditional values. I want your word that you will engineer no rebellion against me, that you will take no part in any such activities.’
And you will take my word?’ wondered Dev, too surprised to hide his surprise. The look on the old man’s face said the rest: I wouldn’t trust my word in your place.
‘I will. In return, you may retire to your estates outside the city in, say six months? The city needs your leadership right now.’
‘You want me to rule the Chetse from your pocket?’ General Dev snorted. ‘I think I preferred Salen’s conversation. At least he didn’t offer false hopes.’ The Chetse veteran looked at the Menin soldier pinned to the wall and the beheaded man on the floor.
‘I will appoint a permanent governor in due course,’ Styrax continued, ‘but I have no desire to see the city collapse into chaos because its leaders have been slaughtered. I must listen to someone among the Chetse, and better it be someone I respect.’
‘I’ll be seen as your puppet.’
‘Then get something of value from it. I’m here to negotiate if you want.’
‘Leave the city?’ the general replied quickly, prompting a laugh from Styrax.
‘Perhaps not that.’
‘Well, I had to ask,’ Dev said with a sigh. ‘If you want me to govern this city, I need some concessions. No requisitioning of held wealth or slaves, no conscription, and a guarantee that there will be no purge of the nobility.’
‘No slaves beyond what would be acceptable by normal Chetse traditions,’ Styrax countered, ‘no conscription - I’ve never taken conscripts. If men want to join, they can, and they’ll do it with the same rights and pay as any Menin. My coffers will need some refreshment, but nothing to bankrupt families or empty Chalat’s treasury; it does me no
good to break you. No systematic purges, of officers or nobles. I can’t expect all of your countrymen to be reasonable, however, and my agents are extremely effective people. Doubtless some will die.’
The general grunted. ‘I suppose that’s reasonable. What about the Lion Guard? Salen said he would disband it.’
‘The Lion Guard will stay. I will, of course, take control of your armoury and disarm the men, but I realise the Lion Guard is not just a legion, to be disbanded and sent back to their homes. A Menin commander will be appointed on your retirement. Someone with sense.’
‘They won’t stand for a Menin commander, and nor should any of the legions of the Ten Thousand have to.’
Styrax called softly, ‘Gaur.’ Soft footsteps entered the room and General Dev’s eyes widened at the figure approaching. ‘General Gaur,’ said Lord Styrax, ‘you have a new command: the Lion Guard of Thotel.’
‘It will be an honour,’ Gaur rumbled. ‘They were competent, at least - one of the few we met on the field.’
‘The few?’ Dev spluttered. ‘It was luck and bad leadership that lost that battle. A general possessed by a daemon is a poor tactician, and his lieutenants who replaced half the army commanders were just as bad. Without that, you would have been swept away by our phalanxes and died of thirst in the desert as you ran for home.’
Dev grimaced. Unable to leave his bed, he had been forced to lie there and hear of the fall of Thotel from a boy barely old enough to swing an axe. The Menin had swept across the Waste like a sudden spring storm and Lord Charr, or rather the daemon that possessed him, had rushed to meet them. In their haste the Chetse legions had been outflanked and outmaneuvered. The core of their army, the Ten Thousand, had been severely mauled, but had managed to retreat while the rest were slaughtered on the field-and at the city gates, the Ten Thousand had found the way barred, Menin cavalry and centaurs waiting to pick off any soldiers too exhausted or thirst-crazed to have the sense to surrender.
‘Perhaps we would have found you a little more challenging,’ Styrax agreed with a smile, ‘but a man makes his own luck, and so does a general.’
General Dev gaped at Styrax. ‘That really was you behind it all?’
‘You find it so hard to believe? Chalat might have been limited as a ruler, but he was no fool, and he listened to men such as you. It would have been too great a risk to try to take this city with an army brought over the Waste; only a madman would divide his forces and force-march half to meet an unknown foe.’
‘And in Charr you had that madman,’ General Dev sighed. He looked his age now, his already withered skin pallid from the weeks of being bedridden.
‘Not for certain,’ said Styrax. ‘Every agent said that Charr was an idiot, the sort that gives our kind a bad name; he should never have been Chosen - but it was always a risk that he might listen to his aides and not march out. A good general makes sure of victory before he offers battle.’
‘But I still don’t understand how you managed it.’
Styrax gave a dismissive wave. ‘Some devotees of Larat playing with powers far beyond their control. A nasty business in all, but one that dropped a useful tool in my lap. The details - well, I think you would be safer not knowing. Now, time is rather against us so I must be leaving. I would appreciate it if you would accompany General Gaur to meet his new command staff. I’m certain you’re not quite as ill as Salen believed. If he’d bothered to ask, he would have discovered that you were found on the Temples Plain, so clearly someone carried you here without killing you.’
‘You want me to go now?’
‘Certainly.’ Styrax crouched down so he could speak more softly. ‘Take care they are courteous. The beast is a valued advisor. Any harm coming to him would do more than have me revoke the promises I have made.’ The white-eye gave a cold smile. ‘Gaur is a humourless bastard most of the time, but if you want to hear him chuckle, tell him you’re going to use him as a hostage when you bargain with me. Understand?’
General Dev nodded. ‘I do. A lord’s friendship is a fickle thing.’
‘Then let us go. We will accompany you part of the way. The barracks overlook the sunken orchards, do they not?’
‘They do.’
‘Excellent. I might even put on a show in your honour.’ Styrax stood and turned to leave, then hesitated. ‘Did the guards even object when you asked for the door to be closed?’
General Dev gave a throaty chuckle. ‘None that didn’t fade before the face of an ill old man they wanted alive in the morning, although I can’t say I expected you to be the one to take advantage of it!’
Styrax gave a snort and disappeared through the doorway, gesturing for Kohrad to accompany him. Gaur stepped toward the bed. With one taloned hand he gestured towards the shattered doorway. It was impossible for General Dev to make out Gaur’s expression. The deep tangle of fur hid any clues.
‘Come, General Dev. Our troops await us.’
CHAPTER 9
The screams of the dead soared up on thermals of violence and spilled blood. Ringed by beacons lit by the silent watching Chetse, the Menin trampled, stabbed, spitted and crushed their former comrades. Many of the attackers slipped on gore-slicked corpses and stumbled over severed limbs; the tapestry of gasps and cries was punctured by the constant clatter and crump of steel. In the borrowed light of a subjugated city, the Lord of the Menin waded through the slaughter all around him, slashing and piercing with blinding speed.
They had driven the Guards of the Hidden Tower out of the sunken orchards, their sudden thrust on two fronts sparking a panicked retreat. The stampede of confused infantry in Salen’s blue and yellow livery had run as intended, into the Plain of Pillars, creating chaos in the ranks of General Quistal’s centaur tribes. Swamped by their so-called allies, the centaurs milled about in confusion, wheeling and kicking at those barging past, then swinging tridents and long-bladed spears to clear themselves an avenue of escape.
From the far side of the Plain, General Gaur led the Bloodsworn, the Menin’s fanatical heavy cavalry, in a thundering charge. Clad in black-iron and sporting Lord Styrax’s fanged skull emblem, the dark knights had appeared like vengeful shadows to crash into the flank of Salen’s traitorous troops. The beast that led them raged, going berserk as he drove deeper and deeper through the enemy.
Styrax had paused to watch his old friend arrive; even in the poor light he could see the fur around Gaur’s roaring maw was matted with blood. Few had ever seen the softly spoken general this way and the knights he led hesitated briefly, then threw themselves into the attack with the abandon of men following a divine force.
Assailed on three sides, with a high stone ridge blocking their flight on the fourth, wiser heads soon realised no quarter was going to be offered. Amidst the confusion of battle, some were stirred to sense as training took over and soldiers started to form tight units working in unison. A man at the heart of the largest of these straightened up in the gloom and recognised Styrax’s looming shape not twenty yards away. He pointed at their goal and the soldiers stepped forward, shields locked together against the onslaught rushing over them, like waves breaking on a stone and flowing past.
Styrax felt rather than saw the movement towards him as a unit of some thirty soldiers tramped forward. Laughter bubbled up in his throat. They thought he was vulnerable, open to a desperate and heroic last charge.
The Lord of the Menin grinned to himself and stretched out his unarmoured hand towards them. The scarred flesh looked even more shockingly white than normal, the ethereal pallor highlighted by the small cut on it that was welling as deep red as his stained fingernails.
The group quickened its pace as helms dropped low behind tall shields, but the white-eye gave them no time to consider their folly. Greedily he drank in the energies swirling over the dusty plain as a sharp prickle burned at his fingertips. He felt Kobra tremble in his other hand, resonating with the rampant power. Casting the magic forward, Styrax saw the interlocked shields crumple and collapse as
a dozen men fell, leaving the others staggering. Styrax did not press his advantage, for up above he heard a voice, then others: a savage chorus of ululating shrieks piercing the air as the Reavers’ mages cast their propelling spells with mechanical precision from behind the attacking main force.
The Plain of Pillars was named after the thousands of twenty-foot-high white sandstone columns erected hundreds of years before, fat columns the width of a man’s outstretched arms, supporting the decorated stone lintels that divided the pillars into rows. Now the sharpened edges and deeply carved corners were proving an unexpected hazard for the plunging Reavers riding their bladed shields, though none appeared to care much. Styrax watched as one soldier, crouched low on his shield with an axe in each hand, almost gibbered with bloodthirsty delight until he clipped a pillar and was sent crashing to the ground. His shield rebounded in an explosion of sparks and buried itself into a Cheme soldier’s chest, but even before his comrade was dead, the Reaver had bounded to his feet and decapitated his nearest foe.
Another of the elite white-eyes plunged down through the knot of soldiers that had been intent on taking out Styrax. His bladed shield severed two heads as it fell to earth. Its owner dismounted expertly, bringing the shield up in defence as he struck out at the nearest enemy, shattering a leg with the mace he carried. As more Reavers landed, propelled over the ranks by a cadre of mages, Styrax stepped back and watched the slaughter. His presence on the battlefield was no longer necessary - the magic-crazed monsters would not notice his lack of participation. They were there to massacre the remaining traitors, to finish the bloody work once sensible men had lost the stomach for it.
Styrax remembered his own days as a member of that wild regiment as though it had been just an opium dream. To be a Reaver was to be an animal, to revel in death and destruction, but he’d given it up when the searing flame of ambition at last overcame his baser instincts: watching the bloated figure of the man he would one day usurp in battle had broken the spell. The Lords of the Menin held greatness in their fists, yet Styrax’s predecessor had been nothing more than a beast, a skillful berserker more suited to the Reavers. He had been simple-minded, blind to the value of anything beyond his baser lusts.
