Winds of War

by Rhett C. Bruno

  He fell in with a group of gold-armored guards and left the estate. Sora was too overwhelmed by the majesty of the place to muster more than a faint curtsy to bid him farewell.

  “Come, dear,” the old handmaiden named Shavi said, leading Sora deeper into the place.

  Sora followed along. She wasn’t excited about the prospect of temporarily sharing the home of an enemy, but she knew it was her best chance at finding Whitney—her best chance because it was the only option that seemed to promise her life. With all the soldiers around, and the daylight filtering in through the great arches of the courtyard, Kazimir wouldn’t be able to touch her.

  She glanced down at Aquira, who looked up at her. Sora was no expert on wyverns or their facial twitches. Her frills undulated, and her mouth was crooked, with one sharp fang hanging out over her lip. She didn’t appear overly nervous, and Sora couldn’t blame her.

  “Can’t be worse than being drained by an upyr,” she whispered to the wyvern. Then they entered.

  XVII

  THE KNIGHT

  “By Iam,” Torsten said. It was all he could manage as Winde Port appeared on the horizon. It didn’t take long leading his army along Muskigo’s tracks for him to realize he’d underestimated his enemy. A mass of refugees swarmed the hill. Traders and civilians, guards and dockworkers—anyone who could escape the port city before the wrath of the Black Sands fell upon it. Some were bloodied, many crying, others being carried with Shesaitju arrows protruding from their backs or limbs.

  Torsten reached down from his perch atop his horse and grabbed a fleeing city guard by the shoulder. The man looked petrified, hands shaking and sweat pouring from his brow. “Soldier, what happened?”

  “The Black Sands… th-they… they…” the man stuttered.

  “Spit it out,” Wardric grunted.

  “They came from the f-fog… thousands of them.” He finally seemed to remember the world around him and grabbed Torsten’s leg. “My brother. He’s still in there. You have to save them.”

  “We will,” Torsten said.

  “Only Nesilia can save them now,” Redstar remarked.

  Torsten glared back at the scourge of his life, then spurred his horse ahead of his army to get a better view. Every thud of his mount’s hooves made the refugees shudder. He hadn’t seen such frightened people since the Third Panping War, after their great mystics were vanquished and the people were left to clean up their dead.

  He rode his horse up a promontory and stared down at the city. Words failed him at the sight. The late King Liam had once called Winde Port ‘the key to Pantego,’ the fulcrum upon which the East and West swung. It wasn’t heavily fortified, even with the defensive measures taken after Torsten returned to Yarrington with news of Muskigo’s betrayal more than a month ago. Wooden palisade walls now wrapped the city where it met land, though they remained unfinished at the city’s north.

  It wasn’t anything insurmountable, and that was half the reason Torsten never expected Muskigo to center his invasion of the Glass heartland on it. But he had forgotten the Shesaitju of his youth—the ruthless, godless warlords whom it took every ounce of Liam’s brilliance to defeat.

  Glass Soldiers were hung by their necks over the palisade walls in the very same manner Oleander had used, some still squirming and alive. The heads of more soldiers crowned many of the pointed stakes comprising the wall itself, and piled in front of it were the decapitated bodies, fortifying defenses with a layer of flesh. Muskigo’s savagery made Oleander’s killing spurt seem like child’s play. Blood rushed to Torsten’s head. It was almost as if the afhem mocked her.

  And yet, of all of it, that wasn’t the worst. From his vantage, Torsten could see a fenced area protruding from the wall, surrounded by spiked barriers. Thousands of Glass civilians were packed inside a camp that appeared as though it had been ransacked. Innocent people tied together by chain and rope like cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse. Gray-skinned Shesaitju warriors stood guard like shepherds over sheep.

  Or worse, like butchers.

  Not warriors, Torsten realized. They wore little more than tattered rags, and every one of them wielded weapons stolen from the Glass Soldiers. The young King had issued an edict to detain any Shesaitju civilian west of the Walled Lake, and in an instant, Torsten knew that these were those people, spurred to revolt by Muskigo’s invasion and making it even easier for them to gain ground.

  The King’s edict, meant for protection, had collected all those potential enemies in one place. With that, and Torsten falling for the deception of Marimount as the primary target, they’d handed over Winde Port on a silver platter.

  “I tried to tell you not everything was as it seemed,” Redstar said from behind him. Just the sound of his voice had Torsten clenching his jaw. “Nesilia is many things, but a liar she is not.”

  “I’m getting tired of hearing about her,” Torsten growled, not bothering to look back.

  “And I suppose your men will quickly grow tired of a commander who lost a battle without even being present. Where was the all-seeing Eye of Iam when Winde Port needed him?”

  “Distracted by snakes in our ranks.”

  Redstar laughed. “Blame me all you want, but it was your scouts who missed this.” He rode up beside Torsten and pointed to the coast of Trader's Bay, south of the city. A light mist loomed over it as it always had in this region. And within that veil of white, tremendous shadows loomed. “That is their fleet, dragged up the coast in the cover of night and fog by their beasts.”

  He was right. One by one they were being turned by zhulong and heaved into the water, completely blocking off the bay. That was how nobody noticed their fleet sailing in from the south because they hadn’t sailed at all. They’d exhausted their beasts hauling their ships, siege weapons and supplies up the oft-rocky, and always foggy coast.

  “Whispers. Rebellion. Spiders,” Redstar said. Torsten turned back and saw him, calm as could be despite the horrors arrayed before them. “It is what lurks in the darkness that we fear more than anything, isn’t it?”

  “This is what you hoped for all along; to watch us fail, all because King Liam took your sister and gave her a life worth living in a place worth living in. Do you know why he and Uriah left you behind?”

  “Because I committed the awful sin of seeking power that is freely available for those willing to grasp it.”

  “Because you were a wretched boy, more interested in playing blood magic than caring for your sister. It was your fault. She needed you in a strange new world, and you couldn’t shut your mouth, keep your weapon down, and help her.”

  “Playing?” Redstar sniggered. “Tell me, Torsten Unger… King Liam died of a long, terrible sickness. I wore the skin of Uriah Davies, his Wearer of White after the Goddess Bliss drained the blood from his body. Does that sound like a game to you?”

  “Are you admitting to regicide?”

  “Heavens no. But my goddess is just.” He patted his horse’s neck like their conversation was nothing more than talk amongst friends. “You were there that fateful day when your ‘great’ king stole a girl from her home and made her a wicked woman, hanging her own from the parapets. I wonder what will happen to you next?”

  Redstar sidled his horse close and laid his hand on Torsten’s shoulder. His other hand pointed with the flat edge of a dagger toward the bodies piled and staked before the walls of Winde Port. “How poetic would it be for you to join them?”

  Torsten hoisted his claymore off his back scabbard and held it at Redstar’s neck. “I could kill you right now for your words.”

  “I’d be careful if I were you, Sir Unger,” Redstar said calmly. “My people are fiercely loyal.”

  “Are you two ever going to stop bickering?”

  Torsten and Redstar whipped around to see Wardric. Behind him, the front ranks of the army stared intently. The Drav Cra warriors squeezed the handles of spiked clubs and spears. The eyes of the Glassmen darted nervously from side to side.


  Redstar lowered his blade first. “Not bickering,” he said. “Merely discussing strategy.”

  “Well, tell your savages to back off,” Wardric demanded.

  “Of course.” He bowed his head. “The true enemy is behind those walls, after all.” He shot Torsten a smirk, then led his horse back toward his forces.

  Torsten could feel the tension in the air like a thick paste, and he realized the mistake he’d made. Driving a wedge further between their combined forces after allowing himself to be fooled was the last thing he needed. He wasn’t ignorant to the whispers as they marched through the bodies of Citravan’s slaughtered legion from Winde Port. Redstar’s people, saying how Nesilia predicted this, his own, fearing that Iam had abandoned them.

  “Wardric,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Set up camp on this hillside,” Torsten said. “I will ride into the city.”

  “For what?” Wardric asked, clearly perturbed by the idea.

  “I plan to speak with the rebel.”

  “You’ve already heard all he had to say at Marimount. Look at the wall. This man has no honor. If he gets the chance, he will string you up with the rest of them.”

  “Then the Shield will be left in your capable hands.”

  “Sir, it is the King’s decision who serves as his Wearer of White.” He shot a sidelong glare Redstar’s way. “If you are lost, there is no saying who would replace you.”

  Torsten brought his horse right before Wardric’s and leaned in close. “Barely a man outside the King’s Shield has fought in a war. Even fewer of them against the Shesaitju, and already, we have lost a battle.”

  “That was barely a battle, it was a sacrifice.”

  “We lost to one hundred ghosts in the fog. What do you think is running through their minds, seeing that city overrun? It’s exactly what Muskigo wants.”

  “How do you know?” Wardric asked.

  “Because it’s what Liam would have done—sewn fear until our army sees them as more than men. It started when they burned down villages during the sacred cycle of mourning. Lights in the trees. Fire. We only lost a handful of soldiers yet half of those remaining shiver in fear.”

  “Losing you won’t help.”

  “No,” Torsten agreed, “but it will show them that one of us Glassmen isn’t afraid. Now, follow your orders.” He sped off toward Winde Port before he could be dissuaded. Unclasping his cape as he rode, he raised it in the air as he headed straight for the gate.

  A westerly breeze blew out from the bay, making the hanging bodies swing and bang against the wall like bamboo wind chimes. It also carried with it the fresh stench of chaos and death. Screams still echoed from the city as the Shesaitju’s conquering of Winde Port was made complete.

  Torsten instinctually reached for his necklace and squeezed the Eye of Iam hanging from it, the gift from his former king which he’d only once removed—never again.

  And he prayed.

  He prayed for all the poor souls hanging because he shifted all his cards toward Marimount. He prayed for his kingdom, King, and Queen Mother. And mostly, he prayed for himself. He brought his horse to a halt at the gate and swung his legs down, then removed his helmet, leaving his sword sheathed in its back scabbard. Approaching the gate with his hands raised in front of him, he heard bow strings creak and tighten in the hands of the Shesaitju glaring down at him from atop the wall. Chains of their new captives rattled from the detainment camp, the sound of whips ringing across the foul air any time one of them tried to speak.

  “Muskigo!” he bellowed. “This is over.” How recently had the situation been reversed? It had only been a matter of hours when Muskigo arrived at the base of Marimount threatening to bring the Glass Kingdom to its knees. Now, Torsten stood, the one looking up at walls—only these were far from a dwarven fortress. Winde Port’s construction was slapdash, barely reinforced but for the corpses stacked before them.

  The heavy iron grated open and the doors swung wide. It was only then Torsten saw that the Winde Port cathedral was defaced. The golden Eye of Iam atop its roof was shattered and all its intricate stained-glass windows just a latticework of shards.

  Heathen monsters.

  A dozen Serpent Guards, all clad in gold filed out, scimitars in hand, faces covered as if they were scaled demons from Elsewhere. From between them, rode Muskigo atop his prodigious zhulong.

  His bare, tattooed torso was covered in gooseflesh from the cold winds and the blood of his enemies. And now that Torsten could see the man’s dark eyes, he remembered how intense they were, like a storm brewing over the Torrential Sea.

  “Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” Muskigo asked. “I took some inspiration from your queen, but the rest was me. Just one last finishing touch.” His hands came out from behind his back, revealing the two severed heads he gripped.

  Torsten recognized them.

  One belonged to Winde Port’s Prefect, Mortimer Calhoun, a distant cousin of the Nothhelms who’d presided over the city for many decades. The other was the city’s priest. Torsten regretted not knowing the man’s name, but the cloth covering his brow made his position unmistakable.

  He raised them both by their gray hair. “I couldn’t decide which would look better hanging from the gates.”

  Torsten stared at the gaping mouth of the priest and couldn’t help but trace his own eyes in prayer for the poor soul. Muskigo shrugged and rolled them both across the mud and snow.

  “So, I took both.”

  “You will pay for this,” Torsten said.

  “And here I thought you came to debate the finer points of decor. My lights in the forest were a nice touch, I thought.”

  “You won’t last in there, Muskigo. This is our land. You’ll starve and freeze until your own people would rather hand you over than keep fighting this futile rebellion.”

  “I don’t think so, Wearer. See, news of your weakness spreads like wildfire across the Black Sands. Soon, all will throw off their shackles and join us. So long as we own the bay, we will eat like caleefs. And I may only just be getting acquainted with this city, but I’ve found the old prefect's estate quite hospitable.”

  Torsten bit his lip in frustration. “This doesn’t end with you surviving, you must know that.”

  “Our ancestors believed that death in the glory of combat was the only way to reach the shores of paradise. If that is my fate, I will not blink an eye. Will you? Will your Iam forgive you all this bloodshed?”

  “If it means stopping a monster?”

  “Monster?” He raised his arms to gesture to all the swaying and decapitated bodies. “A monster stands beside your throne, and Iam rewards her by breathing life back into her son. I hear he whispers to himself in the night as if he’s lost his mind.”

  “Enough, Muskigo,” Torsten snapped. “It’s time we end this. Let all those innocent people go. Face me, on that field, the right hands of our respective kings.”

  “You dare mention my Caleef whom you hold captive within your walls?” Muskigo swung his legs off his zhulong and approached. He too wielded no weapon. In stature, he was a head shorter than Torsten, but his entire frame was laced with muscle. And now that Torsten saw him even closer, he noticed more scars than he could count speckled amongst the white tattoos.

  The arms of the Shesaitju archers, still holding arrows at the ready, shook as their leader stepped into their aim. He didn’t stop until Torsten could feel the warmth of his breath.

  “Long ago, Liam Nothhelm issued my father the same challenge,” Muskigo said. “I was just a child then, you probably no more than a squire. And do you know what happened?”

  Torsten’s hands balled into tight fists within his glaruium gauntlets. He could reach out and break the man’s neck if arrows didn’t shred him first. Instead, he stood, unspeaking. Defiant.

  “My father was foolish enough to accept,” Muskigo continued. “He died that day, his afhemate fell, and the Glass Kingdom crept ever nearer to the C
aleef’s sacred seat in Latiapur, which, of course, was conquered as well.”

  “At least he had the honor to spare your people,” Torsten said.

  “The heads of the afhems were hung from the palms like so many coconuts. Our wives were cast into exile—likely raped by your savages. My mother took her own life in shame. All my father did was help grow the legend of Liam the Coward.” He spit.

  Torsten ignored the insult.

  “Then defeat me,” he said. “Prove you’re better.”

  “There is not a doubt in my mind I would slice your throat open before you could even cry in protest. But you are not Liam Nothhelm. You are not even Uriah Davies, who, as Wearer, earned so many victories in the name of king and God. You are a disgrace to that helm. Nobody. Less than nobody—the hand of a murderous shrew.”

  Torsten reached for his claymore. The Serpent Guards unsheathed theirs in unison. The archers, whose grip had slackened, drew their strings back farther.

  “Do it,” Muskigo whispered, smiling. “Do. It.”

  More than anything, Torsten wanted to oblige him. His hand shook with rage. Sweat poured down his neck only to be kissed by the bitter wind. The entire city went quiet watching, waiting until finally, he lowered his hand.

  Muskigo shook his head. “How far the Glass has fallen. Return to your people, Torsten Unger. Tell them they can bring Drav Cra, Panpingese, even the damnable dwarves… you will all die together.” He turned to walk back to his zhulong.

  “Do not turn your back on me, heathen!” Torsten ordered.

  “Go back to your people and pray to your God,” Muskigo said, hand upon the saddle of his terrifying beast. Raising one arm toward his throng of chained captives, he shouted, “Because the moment you try and retake this city, every single one of them will help me finish decorating this wall.”

  He led his zhulong through the gates, never turning to face Torsten. He did, however, snap his fingers and arrows zipped into the ground at Torsten’s feet, purposely missing but forcing him back to his horse before it fled. As he pulled himself onto the saddle, thousands of captives were whipped and forced to move, bound together in bunches, and one by one sent to spread across the length of Winde Port’s palisade walls—to sit upon the piled corpses of soldiers.