by Luke Scull
The fighting raged on, chaotic images of the horror playing out around him burning themselves into Kayne’s brain as he fought desperately. A warrior was dragged screaming across the ground, entrails hanging out of his belly, black with ash. One man went down under a group of demonkin, their claws and razor teeth tearing off chunks of flesh, pulling him apart while he screamed and screamed, even after it seemed there couldn’t be enough of him left to scream.
The mass of profane shapes parted. The spider demon scuttled out, gore dripping from its snipping pincers. It reared back on four of its hairy legs, pounced with astonishing speed at the warrior who was attempting to blindside it with a spear and severed his head with a single snap of its pincers. The demon was already turning towards a new target as the headless corpse fell to its knees, blood spraying everywhere. The pincers snapped again and more heads sailed into the night air. The warriors nearest the fiend fell back, overwhelmed by this newest threat. They were brave men, would have faced any human foe without giving an inch, but the spider demon put a terror in them that was utterly primal.
Brodar Kayne’s blue eyes narrowed. He raised his greatsword. Alone, the Sword of the North went to meet the demon.
Just as he reached the fiend, an arrow zipped over his shoulder, striking it in the chest, piercing one of the many nightmarish eyes that covered its humanoid torso. Brick, Kayne realized, admiration warring with horror.
The boy was here, fighting alongside men twice his years, hardened warriors raised on a lifetime of violence. Kayne wanted to scream at him to fall back, to seek the safety of the camp behind him. No sooner had the arrow sunk into the demon’s flesh than it was upon Kayne. Pincers snapped out, aiming at his neck. The greatsword in Kayne’s hands danced, knocking aside one clicking appendage after another.
Another arrow struck, this time piercing the spider demon’s abdomen. It reared back on its backmost legs and suddenly Finn was there, his longsword hacking at the demon’s underbelly as it twitched and spasmed above him. ‘Die, you fucker!’ he snarled, though he might just as well have been talking to Kayne.
‘The hell are you doing?’ the old warrior yelled, but by then it was too late. The spider demon slammed its front legs back down, engulfing the Westerman. All but Finn’s head disappeared beneath its grotesque, bristling bulk. The young warrior’s eyes went wide with terror, all his bravado stripped away in an instant. ‘Help me,’ he pleaded.
Kayne sprang into action, his greatsword plunging into the demon’s side. He gave it a vicious twist and ichor spurted out, coating him head to toe. The fiend’s body twisted as it tried to reach him but the Sword of the North was already moving, ducking under the snapping pincers, greatsword swinging and shearing off two giant hairy legs. The demon reared again, writhing above the old barbarian.
Kayne thrust with all his strength, driving his blade in up to the hilt. The demon tried to slam itself down on him but he held it off, skewered on three and a half feet of steel. He jerked the sword down, pulling with all his strength, tearing open the abdomen above him. Ichor rained down, until finally the demon’s stinking innards slid out of the gaping hole in its underbelly to strike Kayne, warm and sticky.
With a shudder, the spider demon went rigid and it ceased its struggles. Kayne thrust the fiend’s corpse away from him. It landed on its side, legs curling up as it died, an appalling sight.
Kayne shrugged off the steaming innards and wiped demon ichor from his face. He went to Finn and knelt down, examined the man’s wounds. Finn’s exposed flesh had been pierced by hundreds of bristling hairs that covered him like a forest of needles. The young Westerman’s breathing was laboured and Kayne guessed the weight of the fiend pressing down on him had broken a rib or two. ‘Hold on,’ he grunted, grabbing Finn below his arms. ‘I’m getting you out of here.’
Kayne dragged Finn over a field of ash that was scattered with dead and dying Highlanders, praying desperately that nothing attacked him while he was pulling the Westerman away from the fighting.
Finn gagged, coughed up a mouthful of spider-demon hair. ‘Why are you helping me?’ he gasped, bloody saliva flecking his chin. ‘I wanted to kill you.’
‘I don’t blame you for it,’ Kayne said between ragged breaths. ‘A man makes his choices and lives with them. I’m making a choice now. You ain’t dying this night.’
Finally he dragged Finn beyond the fighting. The circle of sorceresses was still launching spell after spell at the demonic horde. He thought better of disturbing them to ask for help with Finn – the young warrior would survive his wounds and their magic was needed elsewhere. Kayne was about to turn back to the battlefield when he saw a familiar blonde-haired girl watching him. ‘Corinn?’ he said, dismayed. ‘What are you doing here? This ain’t no place for a child.’
‘I’m not a child,’ the blue-eyed girl shot back. ‘I couldn’t let Brick go alone. He wouldn’t stay away. He idolizes you. You and the Wolf.’
‘He does?’ Kayne said incredulously.
Corinn nodded. She was angry, Kayne saw. ‘I’ll tend to his wounds,’ she said, kneeling to examine Finn. ‘I have some healing... skills.’
The old warrior nodded his thanks and turned back to the fighting. He pounded across the earth, knees jarring with every step, but slowed when he saw the latest nightmare approaching from the southern hills.
There were seven armoured figures making their clanking way towards the camp. Each was covered head to toe in black steel plate in the style of the Kingsman, Sir Meredith, whom Kayne had killed some months back. Sir Meredith had called himself a ‘knight’.
These latest horrors might be dressed like knights but the malevolent red glow behind their visors and the fear that washed over him as they strode forward, massive iron flails swinging, confirmed beyond doubt that they were demons. Their movements were methodical and unhurried. They met the first of the Highland warriors and engaged them. Swords and axes, spears and arrows bounced off their armour, turned aside as though they were mere children’s toys. The demon knights struck back with brutal force, the metal heads of their monstrous flails hitting home with inhuman strength. Shields exploded, weapons were knocked out of hands and arms shattered. Bodies were lifted off the ground and hurled, broken, through the air. The seven fought as one, a deadly, impenetrable unit. Warrior after warrior fell. Fire and ice rained down on the demon knights without effect and bolts of lightning bounced off their armour as the sorceresses tried and failed to stop their advance.
Kayne went to meet the demon knights. His greatsword shuddered in his hands as one took a swing at him and he caught the flail on his blade. Pain shot through his arms and shoulders. He gritted his teeth and tried to hold onto the hilt of his greatsword as another mighty blow threatened to tear it from his sweaty palms.
Oathkeeper screamed nearby. Kayne risked a quick glance to see Carn locked in combat with a demon knight, the mighty chieftain just about the only man on the battlefield with the strength to go toe to toe with one of the fiends. Even the Bloodfist’s magical sword struggled to put a dent in the demon’s armour.
Kayne fought on, his breath coming harder and harder. Everywhere he looked the bodies of dead Highlanders littered the ground. An arrow struck the breastplate of the knight facing off against Kayne and shattered. A boy’s voice cried out behind him and Kayne broke away from the demon to see Brick on the ground, backtracking desperately, a demon knight bearing down on him.
Kayne’s heart felt like it would explode. He couldn’t reach Brick in time. He watched helplessly as the demon raised a gauntleted hand and sent the massive iron head of its flail dancing wickedly above it.
A girl screamed, her voice filled with fury.
Ash swept into Kayne’s face, temporarily blinding him. Ferocious winds suddenly forced him back, almost sent him sprawling. He cleared his eyes just in time to see the demon knight spinning thirty feet above the ground, caught in the grip of a tornado that had appeared from nowhere, leaving Brick untouched. The tornado pulled
the fiend away from the flame-haired archer, carried it away until it was lost in the distance.
Corinn was pointing in Brick’s direction, the girl’s outstretched finger quivering, her face a storm of emotion, blonde hair dancing wildly around her pretty face.
She’s a sorceress, Kayne realized. A mighty one at that: he’d never seen such a powerful spell worked by anyone save a Magelord.
He didn’t have any more time to reflect on his surprise. The demon knight was on him again, as implacable as death itself, six and a half feet of sinister intent wrapped in steel and driven by pure hatred. It battered him, drove him almost to his knees.
Kayne fell back, gasping for air. He caught movement out of the corner of his blurring eyes and his racing heart sank further when he saw yet more demons heading towards them. These newcomers looked like exceptionally tall men and women, dressed in silver cloth and brandishing swords made of a glassy substance and a few pointed metal objects that looked strangely familiar.
‘On my command,’ ordered one of the demons, in a voice that sounded remarkably human. ‘Open fire.’
‘Yes, Adjudicator,’ came a chorus of replies. Kayne parried another swing of the knight’s deadly flail, his arms so tired he could barely hold his greatsword aloft. He looked around wildly. Carn was still locked in his desperate struggle. Beyond the chieftain of the West Reaching, standing alone amidst a pile of slain demons, was Jerek. The Wolf was covered in blood and he clutched something in his hands. It was a visored head. At his feet was the armoured body of a demon knight.
‘Fire.’
The succession of explosions that followed that melodic command almost deafened Kayne. The demon knight opposite him jerked as tiny holes suddenly appeared in its armour, ichor spraying out of its back as it staggered and then collapsed, its armoured corpse sending up a small cloud of ash. Elsewhere, other demon knights were under assault from the newly arrived humanoids. A second knight fell, and then a third, and then the knight facing off against Carn collapsed to one knee, holes peppering its breastplate. The chieftain of the West Reaching brought Oathkeeper sweeping around, parting its head from its neck.
The towering humanoids waded into the remaining demons, crystal swords flashing, their blades cleaving steel-encased limbs as though they were parchment. The humanoid who had given the order to fire approached Kayne, who saw that he wore a cloak of dark blue. There was something oddly familiar about him. Kayne raised his greatsword but hesitated, unsure what to expect.
To his utter shock, the tall, silvery being extended a hand in greeting. ‘Brodar Kayne,’ he said, in a musical voice that plucked at memories of his time in the Trine. ‘Well met again.’
Uneasy Alliances
✥
‘A MUNDANE LITTLE TOWN for such a monumental gathering.’
Thanates stood with his arms folded and his black coat flapping around his thin body in the breeze, staring – if such a thing were possible for an eyeless man – at the unremarkable settlement perched on the crag above them. Westrock was home to only a few thousand people, or at least it had been before the recent upheaval.
Davarus Cole had visited the town once before and could hardly recall a damn thing about the place. ‘Why here?’ he grumbled. ‘Why not Thelassa?’
‘You know why. Alassa will not open her city to the Fade, no matter what promises they make and dire warnings they offer. She would not even consent to attend this council, lest her absence leave Thelassa undefended.’
Cole squinted up at the hill. It was midday and the sun was hotter than it had been in many months. Weeks had passed since the battle at Thelassa’s harbour, and uncertainty over Sasha’s fate had continued to gnaw at him until he felt he would go mad. Not only that, but the Reaver’s insidious voice in his skull was growing more insistent by the day. The Fade he had killed on the docks had filled him with the vitality of several men, but it seemed even the stolen life force of an immortal eventually waned. ‘Can we trust them?’ he asked the wizard-king of Dalashra.
The man he had once known simply as the Crow shrugged. ‘I don’t believe they are lying. Not because I trust their sense of honour – who knows if the Ancients care for such concepts? No, I suspect they simply feel it would diminish them to lie to an inferior race.’
An inferior race. Cole had thought the White Lady arrogant, but the Fade emissary – Melissan – who had turned up at the harbour bearing a white flag of truce made the Magelord appear positively humble. All the more galling was the fact that Melissan had every right to be arrogant: she had fought Cole to a standstill on the docks, and likely would have killed him had Thanates not intervened after reversing his plummet from the skies at the final moment.
A great shadow flickered across the grassy slope and Cole glanced up. For a split second, he glimpsed what looked like a giant silvery bird in the clouds above. It was moving so fast he couldn’t be certain he wasn’t imagining things. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked Thanates. A second later his brain caught up with his mouth. The eyeless mage gave him a dark frown and together they resumed their trek up to the town in silence.
There was ash everywhere – a thick black coating of the stuff that made everything filthy. The dirt clouds did little to help Cole’s mood as he stared at the miserable townsfolk who watched their arrival with faces equal parts fear and despair. Before the Fade invasion, Westrock’s principal trade had been in stone mined from the nearby valley: granite and basalt, hauled down the Serpent River in barges and then transported east along the coast to the Grey City. Nowadays, Westrock was almost a ghost town. Many of the houses stood vacant. War and famine had taken their toll, as had the devastating weapon Cole learned the Fade had unleashed on the Demonfire Hills. The towns of Malbrec and Ashfall nearer to the blast were destroyed, ash and dust having entombed the small settlements. The air was reportedly too hot to breathe for any length of time.
There were no merchants on the roads these days; no money changing hands for goods. Everyone had stockpiled whatever food they could get their hands on and locked themselves away to prepare for the bitter end.
The two men slowed as they approached the clearing where once had stood Westrock’s market. The stalls had been removed. Cole stared in dumbstruck awe at what now vibrated in the centre of the clearing.
It was the colossal, eagle-shaped construction he had glimpsed flying in the sky high above: a gleaming marvel of metal, the wings wide enough for a dozen men to lie flat upon, with room to spare.
‘What is it?’ Thanates asked, hearing the roar but unable to see the wondrous sight just ahead of them.
‘A miracle,’ Cole replied. He couldn’t fathom how anything so huge could possibly get airborne, nor move more swiftly than any living creature.
‘That does not answer my question,’ Thanates growled. ‘You test my patience, child of murder.’
‘I told you not to call me that,’ said Cole. He took a breath to calm his annoyance. ‘It’s a machine,’ he said eventually. ‘A machine that flies like a bird.’
The roaring abruptly died. The air buffeting Cole and Thanates suddenly dissipated. An aperture opened in the side of the machine and – despite the nature of their presence at Westrock – Cole placed a hand on Magebane’s jewelled hilt as the first of the tall immortals stepped into the clearing.
Thanates’ jaw clenched and black fire danced around his hands. The wizard couldn’t see them, but he could surely sense them. Could feel the aura that surrounded these inhuman creatures. There were five in total. The pair at the forefront of the disembarking group were brothers, that much was clear. One was golden-haired and golden-cloaked. He wore a silver circlet on his brow and carried a metal sceptre topped by a gigantic diamond that glittered brilliantly in the sun. The other brother, white-haired and scowling, wore a cloak of black and rested a massive version of the hand-cannons the Ancients used upon his shoulder. Contempt was etched in every inch of his harsh features.
The two commanders from the Fade flagship, Cole reali
zed, with growing dread. The golden-haired brother had somehow cut a great hole in the White Lady’s magical barrier in the harbour. Cole remembered the white-haired brother from the living memory in the ruins east of Thelassa – his deeds recorded and endlessly replayed to an audience of skeletons half turned to dust.
The two brothers were followed by a male and female Fade, who also appeared to be siblings. Both were golden-haired and a little shorter than the formidable duo ahead of them, and both wore dark blue cloaks.
Cole already knew the female to be Melissan – but her brother also seemed oddly familiar. As his obsidian gaze met Cole’s, the young assassin felt a flicker of recognition pass between them. The Fade who brought up the rear was as dark of skin as the other four were pale, though she shared the obsidian eyes of the rest of her kind. She wore a cloak of deep purple. Cole concluded that the colour of the cloak each Fade wore represented whichever caste or role they served.
The Ancients came to a halt opposite Cole and Thanates. Melissan’s brother raised a hand in greeting and then turned and bowed to the towering immortal clutching the diamond-tipped sceptre. ‘I present to you his majesty, Prince Obrahim,’ he announced in a lyrical voice. ‘First-born of the Pilgrims. Eternal Guardian of the People. Undisputed ruler of Terra – the continent you humans refer to as the Fadelands. It is Prince Obrahim who requested this council.’
Thanates sketched a small bow. ‘I am Thanates, once wizard-king of the human nation of Dalashra,’ he intoned. ‘This is Davarus Cole, trusted agent to the White Lady of Thelassa.’
The golden-haired prince did not bow as Thanates completed his introductions, but Obrahim’s voice was cordial enough when he spoke. ‘As one ruler to another, I greet you. Where are the rest of you? These savage mountain folk my Adjudicator has told me so much about.’
‘They prefer to be called Highlanders, my prince,’ said Melissan’s brother, diffidently. ‘I understand they will be here shortly.’ He turned to the white-haired Fade next to Obrahim and threw him a salute. ‘I present to you General Saverian. Second-born of the Pilgrims, Defender of the People and commander of our armies.’
