“The world sleeps,” said Shondareth.
“But a battle also rages,” Tauric said, pointing to plumes of smoke rising from far beyond a line of low hills and ridges in the middle distance, knowing that Besh-Darok had to lie in that direction.
Then Shondareth bent his forelegs and knelt before Tauric. “In ages long past, the kings of Khatris rode into battle on witchhorses – perhaps, majesty, it is time to revive the custom.”
With tears brimming in his eyes, Tauric smiled. “I am deeply honoured.” He stepped in close to the kneeling creature and found that he had to climb up on its neck first then edge back to behind the shoulders. Another witchhorse extended the same courtesy to Ghazrek, and then the entire herd set off at a canter down the hillside towards the smoke trails.
At the foot of the hill they crossed a brittle, frozen brook and were climbing a bare, white slope when eery howls came floating through the air. There were screeches, ullulating wails and the growing thunder of hooves. Suddenly, beyond the next dip and rise, horsemen came galloping madly over the wide, uneven brow of a hill, from between two copses there. Then more appeared to either side in a widening wave of fur-clad riders, first hundreds then thousands, which poured down the hill into a bushy dale then up, heading straight for the witchhorses.
Tauric stared fearfully at the oncoming horde of Mogaun, thinking that his end had come.
Not yet, said the Fathertree. Watch.
The leading Mogaun saw the witchhorse herd massing on the slope above them and swerved to avoid them, as did the rest, some veering left, some right. The others followed their lead, a torrent of tough, grim-faced riders which flowed around the 8-score or more witchhorses, their eyes widening at the sight. Ghazrek shouted a question in a tribal tongue at one of them as his horse laboured up the snowy incline, and got a brief response. Ghazrek then looked at Tauric with an anxious expression.
“Eaterbeasts, majesty,” he said. “They are fleeing eaterbeasts.”
Suddenly a muttering went around the witchhorse herd and Tauric caught a single word, krondemari. Then the giant majority began to move out across the top of the slope in a broad curved formation which forced the Mogaun to make a wider detour.
“Why are they doing this?” Tauric asked Shondareth.
“These eaterbeasts are the krondemari, a twisted race born of an old and corrupted seed,” the witchhorse said gravely. “They must die – we are sworn to this.”
No wiser, Tauric could only sit back and watch. The great host of the Mogaun began thinning to stragglers and the wounded. Then what looked like a solid blackness poured over the higher hill, led by a few tapering columns of the fastest. They caught three limping horses and their riders who all went down, their screams of agony almost lost in the swarm's surging roar of yelps and howls. Tauric felt a rising sense of horror as the vast numbers kept growing while the front edge of the swarm reached the dale, tore through the bushes and came charging up towards the waiting witchhorses.
There was a moment of stillness, then the entire line of witchhorses lowered their heads and as one breathed out long plumes of foggy whiteness again and again until there was an unbroken bank of dense, pale vapour rolling down the slope. When the first snarling, slavering eaterbeasts encountered it they plunged straight into it, not seeing any danger. Tauric stared closely as the creatures careered on through the mist, having never seen one before. From the dark furry pelts he at first took them to be large predators, like Rukang wolves or Nagira bluefangs, then he saw the flat heads, sinuous necks and bodies, and wondered.
They were a stampeding carpet of creatures, packed tightly together so that they half-clambered over each other even as they dashed up the hill. But when they emerged from the mists their coats were encrusted with rime frost, their movements were slower and jerky, and their voices were weak. Some got as far as a few yards from the witchhorses before they crept to a halt and froze on the spot, all colour leaching from their forms as the icy sorcerous death seeped through them.
As the deadly white mist flowed out and along the dale, so did it choke off the eaterbeasts rasping screeches and lock up their limbs with ice, to an accompanying chorus of snaps and cracks. Brought to a halt, they were transformed into a landscape of immobile, opaque forms, gaping jaws and sightless, glassy eyes. The weight of those which had climbed atop others crushed them into chunks and splinters of grey ice and black bones before succumbing themselves.
Some of them, little more than a couple of hundred, had evaded the spreading fog, but groups of witchhorses were hunting them down. Grey, motionless statues soon came to dot the facing hillsides in knots and scattered clusters. But why had they been chasing the Mogaun? he wondered, feeling a thread of bleak sorrow as he watched the last of them die the death of ice.
Mourn them not – they are savage, the krondemari, bred only to kill, said the spirit of the Fathertree.
The witchhorses seem to loath them greatly – why?
Both races share a common ancestry, but one branch of that ancient root race was corrupted and degraded by the Lord of Twilight. The witchhorses see this as putting tortured souls out of their misery…
Shivering, Tauric wondered at the kind of retribution that could survive down through so many ages. Then, hearing Ghazrek calling him, he turned on Shondareth's broad back to see a small group of Mogaun horsemen drawing near. A couple carried tribal standards, one with stylised bloody claws, the other bearing a black sickle moon, while yet others held small grey flags aloft on their spears. Shondareth himself turned to regard the newcomers approach through the snow which had eased off to a few flakes falling in the still air.
Leading them, and carrying no banners, were two older men, one tall, the other barrel-chested, whom Tauric took to be chieftains. With the Fathertree spirit making their speech intelligible, Tauric listened to Ghazrek making greetings and introductions and when they heard who Tauric was, they stiffened and stared at him for a long, hard moment before exchanging hurried murmurs. Then they urged their mounts into a walk and came over to halt before Tauric while a puzzled Ghazrek followed.
“Greetings, Tauric King,” said the taller of the two. “I am Welgarak, chief and father of the families of the Black Moon clan, and this is Gordag, chief of the Red Claws. In the name of our tribes and clans we give thanks to you and your – ” He regarded the assembled witchhorses, “ - friends from the witchhorse nation.”
“You accord us more courtesy now than ever your people did during the invasion,” Shondareth said sharply.
“Different chieftains led the clans then,” Welgarak said. “Other voices gave orders, other hands held the spears. But much has changed of late..”
“Everything has changed,” Gordag cut in. “The past is an empty lie and the present is full of butchery and hungry spirits. We must ask you this, Tauric King – do we ride together against the Shadowkings in accord with the secret alliance we sealed with Yasgur, chief and prince? Or will you say nay and let all our lands become death's dining board?”
Stunned at the man's offer, Tauric forced his face to remain composed. Yasgur had concluded a treaty with the Mogaun? - but when, and why? And did Bardow know?
Then a sense of reproach came over him – if he had not been so obsessed and deluded by the Skyhorse sham, perhaps the Archmage might have told him more.
Some things are learned too late, said the Fathertree. But the experience is never wasted. Now you must decide….
With inward agreement, Tauric straightened and looked the leaders in the eye.
“Chieftains of the Mogaun – I call on you to ride with me against the Shadowkings, and fill their hands with harm and despair!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They have eaten out the vitals of the world,
And left standing a gaunt mockery,
Of broken walls and scorched beams,
Fit only for the dead and the condemned.
—Ralgar Morth, The Empire Of Night, canto xxiii
There was
only silence on the crowded balcony as everyone stared down at the breached wall with its flanking slopes of broken stonework. The dust was settling with the snow, churned in dark mud on the outside by the thousands of enemy troops gathering there, waiting for the order to move into the city. Bardow could see scarcely any defenders attacking from the wall on either side of the gap but he knew from the Nightrook that Yasgur had pulled most of his men off the western and northern walls and was rushing troops to the south ramparts. There was also a rumour that remnants of the Hunters Children had raised a civilian militia over in the Old Town and were busily provisioning and refortifying the Chapel Fort.
For Bardow, however, these seemed like the last desperate acts of a doomed civilisation. All the struggles, the negotiations, the sacrifices, Mazaret's pursuit of Azurech, the defence of Scallow, all of it seemed to have led them to this confrontation with the Shadowking Byrnak, a demigod glorying in his talent for destruction. The only hope left was that the melded sword would be capable of killing him. Nerek was the only person who might get close to Byrnak, therefore she was Bardow's choice to wield the weapon. From his attunement with the Crystal Eye he knew that she was in the High Spire on one of the lower floors, but it also showed him the presence of another two Wellsource adepts close by.
Fearful suddenly, he glanced back into the Vantage Chamber. It was now quite crowded with attendants, servants and scribes, all of whom had sought refuge here in the last quarter-hour due to rumours of killers stalking the bottom floors. Which could only be the two intruders. A handful of knights had accompanied them yet they were not safe here, for when Byrnak forced his way into the palace he would come searching for Bardow. And Bardow wanted as few innocents as possible to suffer when that dread encounter finally took place.
Below, he could see Byrnak's black-armoured troops swarming across the rubble unopposed, so he ducked back inside through one of the archways and went over to stand in the middle of the chamber.
“Friends,” he said. “Pray listen to my words. I have something of great importance to say and time is against us…”
The various muttered conversations died down but before he could go on, a pain bloomed in his head, a dire warning from the Crystal Eye. Enemies had already reached this floor and were closing in. Then a loud hammering began at a door in a side alcove, beyond which was a narrow servants passage and stairway. Bardow had locked and barred it earlier but it was never meant to withstand the furious assault it was now receiving. Even as frightened people were moving away, the door burst inward in a scattering of broken planks and splinters.
A tall, black-cloaked and armoured figure stepped through, firmly grasping the struggling form of a young woman clad in a blue gown. It was Alael, and she wept openly as she strained weakly to escape. Her captor turned to face Bardow who felt a jolt of amazement at the sight of the face of his old friend Ikarno Mazaret, quickly turning to anger and grief when he saw the silver-pale hair and bone-white complexion of a rivenshade. After him came a shorter, slighter figure, likewise garbed in dark armour but highlighted with silver adornments. The woman had Suviel's features and, like her companion, wore a permanent expression of mocking amusement, except that a dark grey ichor was dribbling from the corner of her mouth and she looked unsteady on her feet.
“Is she still…” the Mazaret rivenshade said but before the other could answer, someone else appeared in the wrecked doorway and stared at the two in black. It was Nerek. Bardow regarded her with uncertainty, taking in the burning gaze, the blueish tint of the skin, and the emerald power that held her in a dangerous, gleaming aura.
* * *
Nerek was aware of all the other people in the high chamber, the frightened servants, the handful of knights standing before them with blades bared, the two rivenshades with their captive, Alael, and Bardow who stood next to a rack in which the melded sword hung. But all were like shadows cast on a cave wall by the raging fire of the Wellsource as it rushed through her senses. After the Suviel rivenshade had ambushed her in the library, Nerek had ignored the wound in her side and gone in pursuit. There had been two searing encounters on the floor below, but now it seemed to her that this would be the final clash.
The Suviel rivenshade was still dangerous. As Nerek advanced, the 'shade opened her mouth wide and expelled into the air a long serpent of Sourcefire adorned with several eyes and a mouth full of whiplike tendrils. Nerek held up one hand wreathed in green fire so shaped that each finger was lengthened into wickedly serrated talons. As the sickly green serpent writhed through the air towards her, she slashed at it repeatedly until it fell apart in dazzled shreds that drifted down to burn smoking marks into the tiled floor.
Without hesitation she lunged forward, taloned hand outstretched. She grabbed the rivenshade round the throat and bore her backwards. Two burning hands came up to Nerek's neck, one scrabbling at the collar of her leather corselet, the other inching up to her face. But she tightened her scorching grip and forced the woman down onto her knees. The Wellsource thundered in her mind like a rejoicing, pitiless chorus of spirits as she choked the life out of the rivenshade, squeezed, ripped, crushed…
Then the Wellsource, its full, ferocious, sonorous strength fell away from her, dwindling, fading and finally extinguished. Dizzy and breathing heavily, she straightened and staggered back from the still, lifeless body. Over to one side she saw that Bardow had unlimbered the melded sword and was pointing it at the Mazaret 'shade, who still held onto Alael. Then she realised that there were newcomers in the chamber and she turned to look.
The main door was wide open and Byrnak stood just inside the room with a dozen black-armoured and masked swordsmen at his back. Every breath seemed held for an instant, every eye fixed on him. Byrnak's bearded face was flush with triumph, his gaze bright and eager, his mouth smiling cruelly as his stare took in the room's occupants and came to rest on Nerek. Nerek felt pinned to the spot by that regard and knew that he would revel in his victory before exacting measures of pain. He seemed to radiate power and dominance, his presence exerting a palpable pressure on the thoughts. He grinned with open lust, but before he could speak, one of the knights abandoned his self-control and with raised sword and a battle cry charged at him.
Without looking away from Nerek, Byrnak snatched a dagger from his waist and leisurely tossed it at the oncoming attacker. The dagger flew unerringly towards the knight and punched into his throat. As he staggered to a halt and fell choking to his knees, one of Byrnak's men stepped forward with a glittering broadsword and took off his head with a single blow. The body slumped to the floor, blood spreading across the tiles.
There were sobs and whispers from around the chamber and Nerek, her side burning from the rivenshade's earlier attack, felt powerless, helpless and empty. No, not empty for the hot core of her anger had never left her and the sight of Byrnak only fanned it brighter, hotter.
“This is the end of their pitiful rebellion, Nerek,” he said. “After all that they have done, they have all come to the same place, this arena of futility where only I can prevail. And so may you, Nerek – if you renounce them and their cause, I will allow you to stand by my side once more. Decide!”
Nerek needed no time to consider her response. She drew her sword. Byrnak smiled. The Shadowking was about three paces away and as she advanced, Keren Asherol came unbidden to her mind.
Were you here, sister, she thought, you would either do this properly or not at all. But we have come to the bitterest end, and all we have left is to try and die well.
Behind her, Bardow shouted, “No, Nerek – leave him to me!”
But she ignored him and leaped forward to strike, crying out, “For Keren and Falin!”
* * *
Her words caught Byrnak by surprise, and her swordpoint slipped in past his imperfect parry, lanced through cloth and leather and pierced his upper arm. He had meant to toy with her for a while before having her taken away, but she had insulted him with names out of the past and violated his very f
lesh. The Wellsource surged in time with his sudden fury, and he swiftly healed the wound before surrounding himself in radiant inviolability.
She came at him again with a series of blows that he beat aside as if she were wielding a stick. With the last he stepped in close with a shoulder charge that knocked her backwards. As she lay sprawling and struggling to regain her feet, his awareness flickered around the soul-bound web, observing his warriors as they poured through the wall breach and spread along the streets. There was stiff resistance coming from the northern districts between the city wall and the river, a few thousand troops commanded by Yasgur, while savage fighting had erupted around the western part of the palace involving several hundred sword and axemen who were trying to seize the breach and throw his men back. But they were too few and his masked soldiers were pushing them back step by fiercely contested step….
Byrnak smiled – he could almost smell the mingled taints of blood, iron and snow – then focussed his attention on Nerek again as she readied her sword and planted her feet apart, an unbending resolve in her eyes.
“How foolish,” he said. “What will this serve?”
“I will have fought you to the end,” she said. “Then I'll be dead and finally beyond your reach.”
He simply laughed.
Then he attacked, rage-filled blow after blow cutting and slashing with devastating speed. Somehow she managed to dodge and parry every one with a steely grace that reminded him of Keren. That stoked his fury higher still and with an insensate bellow he lashed out with a swing that shattered her sword and knocked her to the floor again.
She lay at the foot of a long, curved flight of steps that led up to a series of arches and thence to the balcony. Byrnak turned his back contemptuously and looked straight up at Bardow who was still pointing that Sourcefire blade at the Mazaret rivenshade. The rivenshade had released the girl, Alael, and she was cowering behind the Archmage whose face betrayed his despair. Curling his lip in scorn, Byrnak sneered then turned to face Nerek again. He took a second sword from his waist and threw it down to clatter on the floor next to her.
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