Legends II

by Ian Whates

  “Oh sweet Creator, we’re doomed,” wailed Calgallun, stumbling to his knees. He stared up at the sky, now a dark purple of twilight. “The dark’ll catch us and Osdrik’s Cursed’ll take us back to their tombs and barrows for all the life of the Creator.”

  Keldrik looked south and Naldros followed his gaze. Calgallun’s words suddenly took on a literal meaning. An unnatural night was sweeping up the valley from the Snare, blanketing everything with darkness. The priestess grabbed Calgallun’s arm and pulled him to his feet.

  “We can outpace the darkness,” Naldros snapped. “We must run.”

  “I can’t,” Calgallun sobbed, clutching a hand to his injury as he tried to pull from the priestess’ grasp.

  “He tells the truth,” said Keldrik. “More exertion will open the stitches. He has lost a lot of blood already, he can’t afford to lose more.”

  “Then it seems my mercy was wasted after all.”

  Calgallun looked over his shoulder at the encroaching darkness. He felt Naldros let go of his arm and walk away.

  “We can move faster without him,” Naldros told Keldrik. “It is senseless for three to die when two might save themselves.”

  “It is too late to escape the valley,” said Keldrik. “See how the darkness quickens?”

  Calgallun saw that this was true. Already the line that marked the coming night was moving at a brisk walking pace.

  “I am not prepared to surrender my life so lightly,” said Naldros. She turned north with long strides, but as she stepped past Keldrik the man held out an arm to stop her.

  “We cannot run, we must fight,” said the northerner. “There is a place nearby we can defend.”

  “Where?” said Calgallun, casting her gaze across the forbidding landscape.

  Keldrik pointed north-west to an outcrop of rock that looked like a headland jutting into the sea of the valley. At its outermost point stood several broken towers and the remnants of a wall.

  “Fordrik’s Keep?” Calgallun bared his teeth in horror. “That was home to the chieftain who led the traitors. You want to make a stand in the heart of this madness?”

  “Yes, I do. The old stones remember his treachery and will aid us against their shades. Trust me, there is nowhere else in this valley where we will have any chance.”

  “A defensive position sounds better than the open,” declared Naldros. She eased aside Keldrik’s arm with a glare at the warrior. “What have we to lose?”

  “Our souls?” suggested Calgallun.

  “Speak for your own,” said Naldros. “Mine shall become one with the Creator.”

  “And what about yours?” Calgallun asked the other man.

  Keldrik shrugged and turned away.

  The climb up to Fordrik’s Keep became steeper and the failing light made the ascent even more treacherous. There was not a glimmer of moon or starlight above; the valley was infused with an altogether more dreadful illumination. The fog from the standing stones and barrows followed the three travellers, gathering into a low bank a few hundred yards behind, catching up with every pace they took.

  Calgallun frequently glanced back, convinced he could see something else in the sickly glow of the mist. It looked like silhouettes of men and women; gaunt, armoured figures with spears and shields.

  “The shades of the treacherous dead are coming for us,” he moaned, almost losing his balance as he hastened forward in his panic. “I hear their groans and laments.”

  “Nonsense,” snarled Naldros. “There is no sound but the wind in the bushes.”

  The priestess reached a flat outcropping where Keldrik waited for them. Naldros turned back to look down into the valley and her eyes widened with shock. “But perhaps there is something to what you say.”

  Calgallun scrambled up to his companions, panting heavily, though neither of them seemed the least out of breath. He looked up and saw a forbidding cliff face that formed the foundations of the tumbled fortress. Another glance towards the encroaching fog confirmed that the denizens of the Bleak Valley were no more than two hundred paces behind them.

  “Rocks and sheer walls’ll be no obstacle to these spectres,” the brigand said, shoulders drooping in resignation. “There’s no way we can reach the tower afore they are on us, not with such a climb.”

  “Good for us that we don’t have to climb any more rocks,” said Keldrik. He stepped along the ledge and seemed to disappear into the cliff. Calgallun hurried after, and found that in the gloom he had missed an opening, obscured by the roots of a tree above.

  The gap had a lintel overhead and two pillars a little thicker than his legs to either side. There was an inscription on the lintel and he felt Naldros behind him pause to look at them.

  “A very old language,” said the priestess.

  “What’s it say?” Calgallun feared some dread warning to those that would enter, and looked past Naldros at the approaching bank of luminous fog. There were ragged banners amongst the ranks of warriors pursuing them.

  “I do not know,” confessed the priestess, pushing past. “Not at a glance and far from my books.”

  The luminescence of the valley faded as they moved into a square-hewn corridor. In the last glow of light they saw Keldrik waiting at the bottom of spiralling stone stairs.

  “This was a sally port for the defenders,” the warrior told them. His fur-clad shoulders almost filled the passageway from wall to wall and the spiked crest of his helm scraped the ceiling. “To send messengers and raid a besieging foe. It leads into the east tower.”

  “You know a lot about Bleak Valley,” said Calgallun as they followed Keldrik up the steps. Within moments they were in total darkness. The brigand was forced to use fingertips on the wall and a cautious step to keep his footing on the uneven stone stairway. “How come? Nobody lives here, surely?”

  “I’ve spent much time here,” Keldrik replied, “but Bleak Valley belongs to the dead.”

  After ascending in silence for a while, they emerged into a semi-circular chamber of bare stone. Part of the outer wall had collapsed, the timbers and planks of the upper floors long since rotted away to reveal the night sky. Here on the summit, Calgallun could just about see the stars as though through a wispy smoke.

  “This way, quickly,” Keldrik said, moving to the breach in the wall. The other two followed into a courtyard of cracked flags, the paving covered with weeds, grasses growing between. A twisted mountain ash blocked the collapsed remains of a gateway, but there was just about room to squeeze past and into the square surrounding the central keep.

  Calgallun saw steps on the inner wall and quickly ran up them to get a view of what was happening. He could see the length of the valley all the way to the Snare, but it was the phosphorescent glow of the undead host around the castle walls that drew his attention. He thought he heard reedy, distant horns, the skirl of mournful pipes and the soft thump of drums. There were no gates left at the main wall and the glowing horde surged through the gatehouse, a pale aura emanating from the column of skeletal warriors.

  “They’re here!” he yelled, bounding back down the steps three at a time.

  “The keep gate,” snapped Keldrik, drawing his sword. “We’ll hold them there.”

  “How do you kill the dead?” Calgallun asked as the three of them retreated under the faint shadow of the keep’s gatehouse.

  “Allow me,” said Naldros.

  Laying down her foot lance, she placed her hand upon the quiver of arrows hanging on Calgallun’s back and another close to the sheaths at his waist. The brigand could not see wholly what she was doing, but the priestess whispered swiftly in a language Calgallun did not understand. A warmth touched the nape of the outlaw’s neck and seeped into his hips.

  “Your arrows are blessed by the energy of the Creator,” Naldros told him. She picked up her spear. “Mine already possess such power. Keldrik, hand me your blade.”

  “No need,” said the other man. Calgallun could see that there was a sheen to the blade of the gre
at two-hander and the serpents’ emerald eyes glowed with jade sparks. “Power older than your prayers lingers within Osdrik’s Fang.”

  There was no more time for talk. The ghosts of the traitors were now at the extent of the inner courtyard, massing around the ash tree and slipping over the rampart. Calgallun nocked an arrow and noticed a tiny white flame burning at its tip. He gritted his teeth as the effort of drawing the bow pulled free the stitches in his side. Fresh blood seeped into his crimson-stained shirt. He took aim at a warrior advancing from the gateway. The wretched thing had half a face, scraps of cloth and mail still clung to its body and in its hands it held a splintered shield and crooked spear.

  “Creator, guide my shaft,” the outlaw whispered, letting loose the string.

  The arrow seemed to pass through the dead warrior’s ribcage but at its touch the spectral figure evaporated into smoke, a hint of fire consuming it from within. Slicing through four more ghosts behind, the arrow slew them all likewise, leaving a trail of glittering silver vapour.

  Now understanding the power of Naldros’ blessing, Calgallun took his time with his next shot, lining up more than half a dozen targets before he released the bowstring. As before the arrow cut through them as easily as it parted the fog that surrounded the dead, burning each apparition to nothing.

  “Praise the Creator,” laughed Calgallun as he readied another arrow.

  “Not yet,” replied Naldros, pointing with her spear to the right. Dozens of spectres were passing over the wall. She flicked the foot lance to the left where the scene was repeated. The scrape of ancient war harness and creak of bones echoed from the weather-beaten stones.“Arrows alone will not win this battle.”

  “What will?” said Calgallun his hope suddenly punctured. “There must be thousands of them.”

  “Sunrise,” Keldrik said quietly. “Hope for daybreak.”

  “That’s impossible...” Calgallun loosed his arrow and looked up. The stars flickered as though behind a veil and there was no sign of the moon. He returned his attention to the army closing on the keep. “Too long. Too many.”

  “Less time than you think,” said Keldrik. “If we can hold the doorway, their numbers mean nothing.”

  Calgallun did as much as he could, slaying the apparitions by the half-dozen and more, until there were no arrows left in his quiver. He threw it away, and his bow, and drew the two long knives that hung at his belt. They felt light in his hands, the sheen of Naldros’ blessing dancing along the blades. He winced as pain flared in his side.

  “I think this is where you two’ll be handier,” he said, taking a step back towards the empty doorway so that the priest and warrior had room to swing their weapons.

  The dead came on without a word of challenge or shout of battle, eye sockets gleaming with magic, jaws hanging slack but weapons raised.

  Naldros moved first, stepping out to decapitate the closest spectre with her spear before retaking her place at the threshold. Keldrik swept his sword in a wide arc, the blade passing through upraised shields and rusted blades without pause, cleaving undead spirits to dust.

  Soon the press of the dead was such that the weapons of both were in constant motion; on Calgallun’s right the white-fire trails of spear and short sword and on the left the emerald flicker of Keldrik’s relic sword. Between them they wove what seemed to be an impassable barrier to the shades of the ancient traitors, through which not a rusted blade nor rotted speartip could penetrate. Beyond, the yellowish light of the dead grew to a haze that illuminated the surrounding walls and towers, throwing flickering shadows of skeletal warriors and skull faces into nightmarish portraitures on the wind-scoured fortifications.

  Calgallun would not allow hope to rise again; he could not. His wound was aching and the exertions of the day were returning to drag him down into unconsciousness. It took all his effort simply to remain standing and alert, fighting the mesmerising effect of the whirling blades before him.

  He felt a touch of cold on his neck and turned, worried that the breeze came through some breach in the keep walls. The ground floor of the fort was mostly one large hall, with rooms to the left and right through square archways. All sign of furnishing and decoration had long mouldered away, but the stones of the walls seemed intact.

  At the far end of the hall, beyond a cold firepit, the floor gave way to a set of narrow stairs leading down. To dungeons or cellars or perhaps another sally port, Calgallun did not know. His blood froze as he saw faint yellowish light licking up the stairs.

  “Keldrik! Where do these steps lead?” he shouted, not daring to turn his head as the light grew stronger.

  “The tombs, why?” the warrior bellowed back, not pausing in his sword swings.

  “The dead, they’re coming from below!”

  “Fight in my place,” growled the warrior. He turned and strode back across the threshold leaving Calgallun no choice but to step forward.

  For a moment Naldros held the doorway alone, a bright figure at the centre of a white star that seemed to melt the undead at its touch. Calgallun yelled wordlessly and threw himself into the gap left by Keldrik, the glowing slender blade of the dagger in his left hand plunging into a spectre’s chest, dissipating it like ochre-coloured steam.

  Calgallun risked a look over his shoulder just long enough to see more of the dead spilling up the interior stair, stumbling into Keldrik’s blade as he threw himself at them. Parting two more spirits, Calgallun looked back again to see Keldrik hacking his way to the top of the stairs. A moment later he had disappeared from view down the steps.

  At outset the battle had seemed to Calgallun to be a lucid dream, devoid of the usual clamour, smells and emotions of combat. He had been detached, without the scent of blood and steel in his nostrils, no war cries or shouts of pain to jar his conscience. Now that he was close to the spectral enemy he realised that this was not wholly true. His assailants’ features – those that had them – were twisted in grimaces of pain and terror, as though it was not they but the living that were dread-inspiring creatures. He could hear harsh, whispered voices as if from a great distance, and the cries of the dying from afar whenever his glittering knives banished another soul.

  ‘Absolve us...’ they clamoured.

  ‘We repent.’

  ‘Have mercy.’

  ‘We were betrayed also.’

  Again and again with every ghost dissipated by his daggers or Naldros’ weapons he heard a last plaintive wail.

  ‘Forgive...’

  He knew not how he could understand the words of warriors three thousand years dead. And perhaps he didn’t but merely conjured speech from meaningless sound. Maybe it was his own guilt that gave voice to the horde of the dead, for it seemed to him that amongst the throng he would spy a familiar face; familiar in that they belonged to merchants and soldiers killed by his arrows over the years of outlawry. The same faces that haunted his dreams on occasion now manifested in the features of the damned host of Bleak Valley.

  He glanced back to see if Keldrik had returned but there was no sight of the huge fighter. In the moment of distraction, Calgallun failed to see a ghostly bronze spear thrust from the melee. Just as his weapons passed through the apparition, so the spectral speartip slid into him without splitting skin or shedding blood.

  That was not to say the blow did not cause any pain. Agony flared in Calgallun’s left shoulder like the sting of a hundred wasps, burrowing into the deepest bone and nerves.

  With a cry he floundered back, losing the knife in his hand as his fingers spasmed. He almost tripped on the threshold flags and had to take another step in retreat to avoid the spear coming at him again.

  He rallied, slashing his remaining knife through the insubstantial throat of his attacker, but the dead had already pressed up to the door’s boundary, almost surrounding Naldros.

  The moment Calgallun had been forced back Naldros knew what would happen. She needed no divine sight to see that the brigand’s stamina was failing him, nor did she har
bour any illusions of the likelihood she could hold the portal alone.

  Naldros gritted her teeth against the burning of the muscles in her arms and cut through a dozen spirits with a flurry of sweeps and stabs, giving herself time to leap back within the keep itself.

  She felt a shock of transition as she passed over the threshold. Keldrik had been right, there was ancient energy still buried here, akin to the power of the old menhirs but subtly different. The two sprang from the same source but were opposed to one another, like the poles of a lodestone.

  For a moment Naldros thought the spectres would be baulked at the gate by this old energy but it did not come to deter them. The ghosts stepped into the keep without any resistance and it fell to her spear and blade to keep them back. Just behind her, Calgallun was snarling like a wounded animal, occasionally lashing out with his knife at a foe that eluded the warrior-priestess’ attacks.

  “Shut up! Shut up!” yelled the brigand, becoming wilder with each passing moment. “Die, cursed traitors!”

  Naldros thought the young man had gone mad but after a moment’s concentration heard the voices too. They were not natural sounds, like the wind across the hills or the brush of leaves on the stone, but came from someplace else; a place of mind and spirit alone.

  ‘He damned us.’

  ‘We were tricked.’

  ‘We swore no oaths.’

  ‘The treachery was his.’

  ‘Forgive...’

  Dead faces suddenly came to life, wracked with tortured expressions, voices rasping with regret and bitterness.

  ‘Hate and fear they left us.’

  ‘No love, no friends, no hope.’

  ‘Forgive...’

  “We’re going to die,” cried Calgallun, desperately lunging, his knife dissipating another dead warrior. “They’re going to take us to the realm of the damned.’

  “Where is Keldrik?” Naldros demanded.

  “Below, somewhere.”

  At any moment Calgallun’s last strength would fail. When that happened Naldros would be surrounded. She managed a look toward the stair where her other companion had gone, judging the distance. She was not convinced she would be able to make the run before the spectres were upon her. Even if she reached the sanctuary of the narrow steps there was no guarantee Keldrik continued to hold the attack from below.