by Tom Lloyd
‘Ashain and Holtai are dead,’ Doranei said bluntly. ‘Endine’s just had word from Moorview.’
His words were met with a stony silence, though he could tell this was truly news to them all. But there were no gasps, no oaths or promises of retribution. We all know the enemy we face; we know how ruthless and inventive Azaer is. Our king expects setbacks already, and we’ve not even crossed the border!
‘It seems two regiments were not enough,’ the king muttered angrily. ‘I should have been more forceful with them.’
‘Your Majesty,’ Endine interrupted, ‘you and Ashain kept your distance for a reason, to preserve the truce between you. That he was too proud to accept a greater escort—’
‘Is my fault,’ Emin finished. ‘I should have given him no choice! To prevent a spat between supporters I allowed one to make a choice I knew was dangerous – and as a result that we have lost two of the Crystal Skulls. The damage those could do to our armies . . .’ His voice tailed off as he glanced down at the thousands of eager young men who might be about to bear the brunt of such a decision.
‘The Devoted have no mages to use them,’ General Bessarei reminded him, ‘and Dashain reported there are few in the Circle City to match ours – Tor Salan too, thanks to the Menin.’
‘And we still hold the majority,’ Emin said, seeming to rally from his despondency. ‘Dash, that’s your priority: bodyguards for each of the Skull Bearers, trusted men only. Not all of them have Endine’s skill or Vesna’s martial prowess.’
‘Morghien and Lahk are deployed well behind enemy lines; it may be weeks before even a mage could track them down—’
‘Then get started immediately – Doranei, take the news personally to those we need to protect. Tell them to gather together and consolidate their strength – though I doubt even Ilumene would try to kill them right under our noses.’
‘What about you, Sire?’
‘Me?’ Emin shook his head. ‘I’m in no danger from him.’
‘Are you sure?’
The king’s face hardened. ‘Azaer wants me there at the end, Ilumene too. This is personal for all of us; it has been for years now.’
‘Tactically it makes no sense either,’ Dashain added. At a look from both men she explained, ‘You make the greater command decisions, Sire; you are a known entity to them. To kill you when you are no Chosen makes no difference to the skill of armies, but it forces a new leader. It hardens the resolve of your people and most likely Count Vesna would take your place as supreme commander, aided by more experienced generals like Suzerain Torl and General Lahk. They might be foreigners, but they’re allies the legions will trust.’
‘It weakens the child’s claim to act as intercessory for the Gods too,’ Emin agreed, ‘if it’s the Mortal-Aspect of Karkarn whose banner flies over the army.’ He paused and looked out over the fluttering standards arrayed across the town and fields around it. ‘In fact, Dash, make that happen.’
‘I will.’
‘Ah, Sire, there was something else: most of the garrison was killed. Some managed to flee, and the civilians weren’t harmed, but the attackers stayed to fight anyone who’d face them. When the guards returned, they – ah, they found one of their own on the gate.’
‘On the gate?’ Emin stiffened. ‘Pinned to it? Impaled to the wood?’
Dornanei ducked his head. That was how Ilumene had left one of the king’s closest supporters on the night of his bloody defection to Azaer.
‘You bitter little child,’ King Emin whispered to the wind, ‘always the braggart and bully.’ He straightened and looked at Dashain. ‘Organise greater protection for the queen and my son as well. Dragoon all retired Brotherhood for the job. He’ll be keen to return to Ruhen’s side, but we take no chances.’
Dashain left immediately, almost running in her haste to get to the restricted chambers of the castle, where their more unconventional methods of communication were kept.
The king turned back to his view. He was silent for a long time.
‘All these recruits,’ King Emin said at last, ‘all these men we have gathered in haste . . . who knows how many Ilumene has seeded among them?’
‘That’s always the way,’ Doranei said. ‘In an army there are always strangers, men with unknown pasts.’
‘General Bessarei, lead them out; make all haste to support the advance army. We’ve already decided our plan. The worst we can do now is allow Azaer to distract us from the course at hand. This war must be won by swift action.’
Doranei looked at the tens of thousands beyond the castle walls. Their armies now were larger than the fifty thousand who’d faced the Menin at Moorview. Mercenaries from the Western Isles and the Denei Peninsula, battle-clans from Canar Fell and recruits from up and down the coast, men grown tall and strong over decades of plenty in the kingdom, bolstered by the finest of the Farlan and Amber’s hardened veterans. ‘It will be,’ he declared with certainty.
Emin nodded. ‘We’ve seen to that, Isak and I. We have escalated and hurried this conflict to disrupt the patient plans of an immortal. The lives lost by consequence are on us, chains we will drag up Ghain’s slope. The pace of war quickens. These are the final days, my friend. Soon the Land will be remade and Death’s Judgment against us all will be set in stone.’
Morghien watched the shadows lengthen from a marker-stone at the side of the road, pipe in hand but barely remembered as he waited. Tsatach’s eye was bright in a clear sky, casting warm yellow light over the young oaks lining the road. The air was cool, but his jacket was thick and covered in metal scales, so the journey here had been enough to warm an old man’s bones.
‘Too much of my life’s been spent waiting at a roadside,’ he muttered to the empty air.
‘It is who you are,’ said a voice in his mind, feminine and as delicate as a wisp of smoke. ‘A choice you made a century ago.’
He drew on the pipe, just about managing to coax the last embers back into life. ‘I thought it was because I welcomed a Finntrail into my soul. Don’t think I ever felt the urge before.’
‘What, then, are the treacherous gifts it compels you to leave for travellers at the roadside?’
Morghien smiled. The origins of the Finntrail were a mystery even to him, but it was common knowledge that when a desperate traveller found food or drink by the roadside around twilight, they had likely been left by a Finntrail. Once the gift was consumed, the Finntrail would haunt their prey for days, slowing draining the life from them.
‘Wisdom,’ he decided. ‘Wisdom’s a treacherous thing in the hands of most.’
‘Only its application.’
Morghien shrugged. ‘And yet I pass on wisdom to all those I meet, Seliasei, irrespective of the brains they might have to apply it. Look at Lord Isak now, I opened his eyes to the unnnatural side of this Land and see how he plans to use that knowledge?’
The Aspect laughed, the trickle of water in a stream. She had been with Morghien longer than any of the others inhabiting his soul and knew his humour well. ‘So you did – perhaps all this can be blamed on you. Without you I’m certain this fulcrum of history, this instrument of the Gods, would never have found his own way to destiny.’
‘Bah, you’ve been consorting with the Brotherhood too much, my lady,’ Morghien said with mock displeasure. ‘Starting to pick up their bad manners.’
‘The company I keep . . .’
‘Includes ghosts, Finntrail, unaligned spirits and other lost voices,’ Morghien reminded her. ‘I’m a civilising influence on the lot of you.’
He felt the Crystal Skull at his waist pulse as Seliasei drew briefly on its power, his eyesight suddenly sharpening to a hawk’s piercing clarity. ‘Seekers of wisdom approach.’
Morghien scowled. ‘There’s only one sort of wisdom they recognise.’
‘The sort you intend to grant,’ she replied, her voice fading on the wind as the minor Aspect receded to the back of his mind, waiting to be called upon.
He waited for the
travellers to come closer before bothering to move. When they spotted him two soldiers were sent on ahead, the scarlet sashes bearing the Runesword of the Devoted their only insignia. The men looked local, stocky, with tanned skin, quite unlike the Raland men who’d been brought here, which meant their efforts to recruit had not been in vain.
‘Who’re you?’ one of them called from a dozen yards away. Neither carried crossbows, Morghien was pleased to see, but their spears still had the reach over his own weapons, and several of their comrades behind had arrows nocked. They both wore stiffened leather armour and ill-fitting helmets and had shields slung over their backs – not regulation Devoted kit either; it made Morghien wonder how disciplined these recent recruits were likely to be.
‘Name’s Morghien,’ he replied with a wide, welcoming smile – an expression many had commented looked sinister and unnerving on his weatherbeaten face. ‘I’m hear t’speak to your preachers.’
‘The village is only a couple hundred yards away,’ one pointed out. ‘Hear ’em preach with the rest.’
‘Oh, I think I should do so before that happens.’
‘Why?’
‘I might not like what they say,’ Morghien replied cheerily. ‘The debate’s half the fun, I reckon, but not everyone agrees.’ The soldiers both levelled their spears immediately, and glanced around at the trees on either side as though expecting an ambush to be sprung. Morghien waited patiently while exactly nothing happened.
‘You’re a rare breed of fool,’ advised one of the men while his comrade beckoned their officer over.
‘You don’t know the half of it, friend,’ Morghien said, ‘but I’m one brings wisdom with him.’
‘Wisdom?’
‘A little knowledge – that dangerous thing your preachers seem to fear.’
The soldier frowned, bemused by what he was hearing, but a few moments later his superior arrived and he gladly stepped aside, though he kept his spear levelled, clearly expecting the order to run Morghien through at any moment.
‘Troublemaker?’ asked the man with a captain’s insignia badly stitched to his sash.
‘Madman,’ was the response. ‘One who don’t like Ruhen’s Children much.’
The captain looked around Morghien towards the village. ‘Damn. They’ve been watching out for us. Well, friend, looks like you’re screwed. I was going to kill you quick, but now the villagers have come out to play it looks like you get the public execution – not so quick.’
‘I do like an audience,’ Morghien replied, gesturing down the road to where the villagers were watching nervously at the boundary stone. ‘Shall we?’
He set off without waiting for a reply, not wanting the captain to remember prisoners should be disarmed before they came quietly.
‘Hey, you! Wait there.’
Morghien turned, but kept walking backwards, a quizzical look on his face. One soldier hurried forward to catch him up, but in his haste he didn’t keep a proper eye on the ageing wanderer. Morghien lurched forward unexpectedly and grabbed the shaft of the man’s spear, pulling it past him as he aimed a heavy kick at the soldier’s leg.
The soldier fell, dropping his spear in surprise and Morghien hammered down with it onto his chest, hearing a rib crack before he reversed the weapon and hurled it at the second soldier. He tried to dodge, but succeeded only in letting the spear scrape across his breastplate and slice into the unprotected inside of his arm.
‘To arms!’ the captain yelled over his shoulder, affording Morghien plenty of time to draw his weapons and advance. The second soldier was still clutching the gash in his arm, when Morghien reached the captain and deflected a wild swing before burying his axe in the man’s knee. He finished him off with a thrust to the throat and let the body fall between him and the remaining soldier, who was half-beheaded as he lurched around the corpse.
Morghien stepped behind a tree to afford himself some protection from any rash crossbow bolts that might come his way. The villagers coming down the road had clattered to a halt at the sudden violence, but now they stared aghast at the felled bodies. Two of them dropped to their knees at the sight.
Not the usual reaction, Morghien thought to himself as the soldiers behind started to shout in panic. I’d have thought they’d scatter from any sort of fighting.
‘Murderer!’ shrieked one of the lead villagers, ‘heretic!’
Great, one of those.
His attention was soon caught by screams from the main group of soldiers. He peered around the tree in time to watch the last of the crossbowmen shot.
‘About bloody time,’ he muttered, walking forward without haste while Farlan Ghosts rose from their leafy hiding-places to attack.
A flash of copper caught the light as Shanas, former devotee of Fate, joined the fight, the tattoos on her bare arms blurring as she slashed the nearest Devoted’s thigh. They were outnumbered two to one at least, looking at the fifty-odd soldiers in the column, but a dozen fell to the glaives of the Ghosts in their first charge.
Morghien ran forward and released the power of the Crystal Skull at his waist. The misty form of Seliasei swooped out from his body, buoyed by the sudden rush of power, and reached for the nearest terrified soldier, while three more insubstantial figures followed.
The black jagged shape of the Finntrail ran jerkily along the road, and hooked the leg of one Devoted, dragging him to the ground. A slender wolf-shape darted past it, leaping at another but passing straight through the alarmed soldier, while a grey hawk clawed at the eyes of the next. Though too weak to hurt the man directly, the wolf spirit’s flowing mane of fur filled his eyes for long enough for a Ghost to take the soldier down; he followed the wolf’s path and battered aside the next man’s spear before chopping across his face. Blood sprayed high as the man fell backwards, just as a spear thumped into the Ghost and downed him.
The Ghost flopped back, keening with pain as the spear jerked clear and blood poured from his side. His nearest comrades responded by calling out their battle hymn. Seliasei caught his killer’s spear-shaft and tossed it aside as the words were taken up by the remaining Ghosts. The Devoted soldier was dragged from his feet amidst a roaring invocation of Nartis’ rage, then the dark Finntrail spirit pounced again.
Morghien caught up to the fighting, stepping into Shanas’ lee as the athletic young woman danced past less nimble opponents, never stopping, never getting into a test of strength with the men she faced. Shanas slashed at arms and legs with cruel accuracy, and when they turned to follow her path, Morghien chopped and stabbed in her wake, magic flooding through his limbs to add force to each blow.
The Devoted were boxed in: the Farlan Ghosts pressing in on both sides and a pair of black-clad King’s Men blocked the road behind. Splinters flew as the brutal glaives shattered their shields, men howled and whimpered as they sought to run but were given no quarter. Morghien saw the cowering preachers ahead, one shouting an incoherent prayer as Seilasei rose up before them on a column of flowing mist.
Faced by a minor Goddess rising radiant in the dappled light, the leader of the preachers broke off his beseechings and stared open-mouthed. She looked down at him pityingly, smoky trails of hair moving in a breeze he could not feel, and stepped forward. With the power of the Skull within her, Seliasei’s face now possessed a light and texture Morghien had rarely seen before. The curve of her breasts was more than a suggestion in the dim light, the smooth lines of her belly opaque and alluring.
‘Daemon,’ the preacher gasped as though it were his dying breath.
‘No,’ Seliasei said in a voice like running water, ‘I am a daughter of Vasle, born of the divine. And you: you are my enemy.’ With a movement so elegant it seemed like a caress, the Aspect cupped his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes for a long moment – then she snapped the man’s neck with barely a twitch of exertion.
The Ghosts cut down the last of the soldiers and put the remaining preachers out of their misery with brutal efficiency. When all the enemy we
re still, they saw to their own, dispatching those too injured to help, then moved on to search for valuables, supplies and any weapons worth taking.
Morghien watched them with a chill on his neck. No matter how many times he had done the same – food or arrows were always important to an inveterate wanderer – he still lacked the seamless transition between warrior and scavenger that veteran soldiers possessed.
‘Brothers,’ Morghien whispered, a tiny spark of magic crackling on his tongue.
The Finntrail, hawk and wolf-spirit both turned to regard him, revelling in the strength they drew from Morghien’s Crystal Skull. They returned of their own accord, and he shivered as each entered his body: the wolf a delicate brush of chilly fur on his skin, the Finntrail coming as an ache in his bones and a bitter taste lingering on his tongue.
He did not withdraw Seliasei; she was the strongest of them and would do more good speaking to the villagers than he could ever hope to. But as he turned towards them he hesitated. The vil lagers had closed on them, creeping forward while they chopped down fifty men, and that disconcerted Morghien.
He tugged on the invisible thread of magic linking him to Seliasei and the Aspect came forward without question, gliding along the road until she was at his side and watching the advancing villagers with him.
‘I see a Wall of Intercession, or what serves as one outside the cities,’ she said, looking past them and into the village. ‘A hedge of some sort, it is covered in strips of cloth – each one a prayer. I—’
The Goddess broke off and Morghien felt a wave of revulsion wash through her. His concern deepened: Seliasei was always so assured and calm, and her reaction was profoundly worrying.
‘What is it?’ he urged.
‘Devotion,’ she said in a horrified whisper, ‘worship I cannot touch. It hangs in the air, a festering cloud of prayer surrounds this place.’
