By evening, the camp was struck. It was a wretched place the lords of Mooreye had prepared for him. The empty fields north of the city were rotten, the soil drowned by rains far heavier than usual, and the stalks of last year’s yield strung through the muck like worms. Effluent bogs pocked the earth, while the corners of each field were marked with thickets of gnarled, grey-barked oaks. As the Furyons settled in, the silence became ominous, broken only by the thunder and the wailing of a few mournful whippoorwills. He could not decide which was worse: the boggy fields or the soulless soldiers occupying them.
The night deepened, and the campfires sputtered. After doling out orders to some fifty captains, Archmyr plodded back to his tent, whose top sagged beneath the rain. Awaiting him was Nimgabul, and even more unwanted, an emissary of Mooreye.
“Master Archmyr.” The young soldier bowed. “Will you come with me? My Lord has invited you to his tower. He would see you now.”
“Would he?” He set his palms on his sword hilts and planted himself like a tree a half-step from the lad. “Tell him to look over his walls if he wants to see us. These fields are barely fit for pigs, and yet here he drops us. Our boots are sodden. Our tents are sinking in filth. If my men seem not to mind, don’t be fooled. I mind, and I’m the only one who matters.”
“I… I see your meaning.” The lad was clearly frightened. “Perhaps you should tell him firsthand.”
He looked all around. In the muck, in the trampled weeds, beneath trees two seasons from dying, the Furyons sat and stared. “I know what your master would do,” he said to the soldier. “He puts us here as a lesson. The Moor’s Eye is the master, he wants me to think, and the Furyons are to dangle like strings from his fingers.”
The lad stammered, “No, Sire. I think—”
“I know your master’s game. And so my answer is no. I’ll not see him tonight. He’s not earned the luxury of my presence.”
“But Sire—”
“I will assemble my five hundred finest on the morrow.” He gazed like a wolf upon the lad, shrinking him. “As the Wart bids, I’ll march Furyon’s best through your city. Your master may catch a glimpse of me then. Perhaps when he sees the man he’s disrespected, he’ll turn his lords out into the muck, that Furyons might sleep tomorrow where Grae lordlings lie tonight.”
“Nentham won’t like that. Perhaps I should—”
“…tell him exactly what I said. Every word of it. And tell him the Pale Knight sleeps best under white linens near a roaring fire, with food enough for ten men on my table. Whatever deal the Emperor bargained with him, I don’t care. Tell your master I want no Grae gold, no lily maidens suckling for my attention. I want him to know who is lord here. In a year, it might be he who sleeps in the muck, and I who rules the highest Moor’s Eye tower.”
“He won’t like that either,” the lad said bravely.
Smirking at the discomfort his comments had caused, he sidled up to the lad and gazed at him like a broadsword skewering an apple. “Tell him I don’t care. He’ll see me tomorrow, and no sooner.”
The emissary swallowed hard and spun to leave. Archmyr glimpsed the shadow of twenty of the poor lad’s fellows lurking in the distance, and laughed to himself that none of them had come forth to offer their brother help. “How many?” he shouted as the lad sulked into the night.
“Sire?” the young soldier called back.
“How many soldiers has your master gathered? How many of you have flocked to his banner.”
The lad seemed reluctant to answer. “Ten…and two thousands, Sire.” His voice cracked.
“Good, that’s good.” He smiled to himself. “Sleep well, little lamb. We’ll see each other tomorrow.”
At noon of the next day, he and five hundred Furyons came to the northern gate of Mooreye City.
Whistling wind and warm drizzle greeted their arrival, drumming upon their black helms and sluicing the thoroughfare clean. Like the pallid tip of a blackened spear, he rode atop a white warhorse at the procession’s front. Save for Nimgabul, the rest of the Furyons followed on foot. The Grae greeted him with smiles at first, and then later looks of terror. He and his soldiers darkened the streets, spears bristling and swords clacking against Dageni greaves. The Mooreye host stood and watched and shivered in their boots. The liars, he thought with a grin. They brought a thousand instead of five hundred. But they know. Look at them, not a one with dry breeches.
The hosts marched side-by-side, but it was the Furyons who claimed the center of each road. Their footsteps boomed on every street, their line like a black adder slithering from one end of the city to the other. The Mooreye folk gathered by the tens of thousands, watching from windows, rooftops, alleys, and stoops, but there was no fanfare, no roar of approval for Nentham’s choice of ally. Instead of cheers, Archmyr saw only open-mouthed stares. Instead of awe, he saw dread. And through it all, he wore his most sardonic grin like a badge of honor.
This went just as Lord Nentham planned, only not at all.
The ceremony was swift. In a square at the far end of the city, the Wart and a trio of Grae captains presented the Furyon host to the people, and then ushered them out. Nentham Thure never showed his face, nor did most of Mooreye’s aristocrats, a fact that Archmyr relished, for it signaled to him that even the Mooreye elite were fearful of him. By late afternoon, he and his five hundred rejoined the legion in the boggy fields. The hammering rain returned, and the hinges of day slammed into night. Not a single campfire survived the eve’s weather. Save for the light of a few dozen lanterns hanging from pole-top chains, the fields became as black as the sky.
An hour after nightfall, Archmyr strode the black fields with a guttering torch in hand. He had no plans of sleeping tonight. He moved between the silent ranks like a serpent, his face damp with rain, his raiment dripping. He came to one of the hanging lanterns, an island of light in the pitch, and he halted beside Nimgabul, who gazed into the blackness as if waiting for the night to speak.
“There you are.” He flashed his flame near Nimgabul’s face. “I’ve been looking for you. Are you ready?”
Nimgabul gazed emptily at him. The Furyon goliath looked like a tower in the mud, the rain saturating his crimson cloak like a miserable flag.
“Did you see them?” Archmyr gestured in the direction of Mooreye City. “They have no stomach for what we do. One look at them, and the Emperor’s heart would seize. Tonight, I think we’ll spare him.”
Nimgabul blinked, his jaw twitching. He understands, thought Archmyr. He probably thought of this before I did.
“Gather your knights,” he continued. “Tell them we’ll use no horses. I want them at the southern edge of the camp in an hour. I’d command you to make no noise, but it seems silence is what you people do best anymore.”
Nimgabul spun and stalked into the night. Smirking, Archmyr watched him go. When he left the warlord’s camp, he strode through the shadows and arrived at a dead patch of earth where his captains were already gathered. They stood in a black ring like a council of ravens, eye-whites gleaming, necks craned to see him speak. “It happens tonight,” he told them. “This is what the Emperor would want, and so we’ll oblige him. Claim the streets for Furyon. Burn the garrisons and string up every soldier. Kill their horses, tear down their towers, and let the innocent see you do it. The Moor’s Eye belongs to you now. Tonight, it becomes the Tyberia’s threshold.”
Like corpses crawling from their graves, the legion stirred to life. Though the Furyons’ voices were silent, they listened well enough, and within the hour their captains had them positioned in great ranks upon the fields. Their spears jutted to the black sky, their gazes set on Mooreye like crows on an upturned graveyard. If the darkness impeded them, Archmyr could not tell. They moved as fluidly as fish through water, needing no fires to find their places.
“Here are mine,” Nimgabul growled when he returned with his knights. “Let us be the vanguard. We fear the Grae not.”
“There will be nine vanguards,”
he said with a shrug. “One for each gate. But if you wish, you may ride beside me.”
“The Emperor will be grateful.”
“He might. The Commander won’t, but then…there may come a day where Daćin’s no longer favored. And that day may come soon.”
Nimgabul’s acquiescence pleased him. He rotated his gaze across the fields, drinking in the shadow of his legion, who stood stiller than death in the darkness. It was then some twenty of Nentham’s soldiers appeared. He saw their torches flicker above the grass, their horses trotting nervously. A few flashes of white lightning set fire to the cloud bottoms, casting the fields under an eerie white glow. They see us. He smiled. They should turn around, but no. The fools are coming closer.
It was Wart who came, him and twenty soldiers. The old man rode ahead of the others, bouncing uneasily atop a bloated, barrel-bottomed warhorse. “Lo!” the Wart cried out. “Where are you, Pale Knight? My master isn’t pleased. Twice he’s summoned you, and twice you’ve ignored him.”
A warm breeze whisked past Archmyr’s cheek, a wet, humid wind mingling with the sweat of sixty thousand Furyons. He whistled, and a thousand tiny screams filled the air. The hail of Dageni darts cut through the rain and found their mark in Mooreye flesh. Wart and his followers toppled at all once. He would have laughed, but for how easily the Grae men died. With Nimgabul trailing, he waited until the last dart fell and walked to where Wart writhed in the mud. The old man was thrice pierced, his slain stallion crumpled atop his legs.
Archmyr’s armor caught the light just so, glinting against the sea of Dageni darkness beyond. He raised his torch and knelt beside the dying man, and instead of soothing, he mocked. “Shhh…” He put a pale finger across Wart’s lips. “Soon it’ll be over. You should be grateful. The new lords of Graehelm are behind me. Be glad you’ll not live to see the day when they are your kings.” He waved his torch at the Furyons behind him, drawing them forward. Many hundreds issued from the darkness like ghosts from their crypts, cutting the throats of the dying, dart-riddled Grae men before falling silent once more.
“Traitor,” Wart gasped.
“Indeed.” He leaned close. “But not to you. These animals would’ve killed you no matter what I did. But know this; when all the Grae are gone, they’ll turn on each other, and I’ll be the only one left.
“And truly, that’s the whole idea.”
He leaned close to the old man and drove his palm into the most mortally placed of the Furyon darts. With a final gasp, Wart was extinguished, and with his slaying so ended the alliance between Mooreye and Furyon.
That night, when the rains ceased to fall, the streets of Mooreye City sat like the rows of a graveyard, cold and quiet. No one ventured outside. Few remained awake. In the dead hours after midnight, Archmyr’s horde arrived unnoticed at each gate, massed by the thousands, hungry to taste blood. Quiet as death, they took their places, and then all at once attacked. The sentries atop the walls were first to die, shot down by black bolts as they wandered between crenels. The gates were next. Cut from Grandwood oak and reinforced with steel, their planks were strong, but were no match for Dageni sword, axe, and spear. At the northernmost gate, Archmyr sat atop his steed and watched thirty of Nimgabul’s knights hack man-sized holes through the timbers, slicing through wood and steel as if the great doors were made of paper.
The gates splintered. The silence shattered. The Furyons crashed into the city. No more guards than usual were at their posts, and so Nentham’s army, resting inside their halls, did not arise until much too late. No matter the darkness, the saturated streets, and the lanterns long ago extinguished, the Furyons spread through the night unhindered. They cut into the city like a scythe, cleansing all those who scrambled against them. They tore past the first wave of Nentham’s men without a single loss, carving a bloody path toward the city’s heart, stopping only to set fire to all that would burn.
Archmyr did nothing assist the slaughter. Nigh invisible in the dark, he and his white stallion lingered beneath an extinguished street lantern, watching and listening as the city perished. He witnessed a host of Grae soldiers rally only to be carved up like cobwebs, swords splintering like kindling, captains and knights murdered to the last man. He heard the wails of surrendered men as they were massacred right before their families, and he sat utterly still as women screamed, children wept, and whole houses came crashing down in flames. The night turned red above and below. Flames licked the bottoms of the clouds, seeming to set the sky ablaze, while the streets ran redder still, the lifeblood of thousands mingling with the rain. He saw rivers of it wend out of alleys and down streets, and he raised his brow when a great scarlet stream emptied into a sewer grate not three steps away.
After many hours of horror, the night waned.
A grey sunrise limned with smoke and red-rimmed clouds settled atop the city. Archmyr found himself alone, his commands unneeded against the utter lack of Grae resistance. Having dozed for several hours in the husk of a hollowed-out inn, he emerged into the smoke and led his stallion to the city’s heart. In many of the windows he passed, he saw Furyon eyes gazing blankly out. In nearly all of the alleys he glanced into, bodies of the Grae soldiers were piled, many of them hewn so horribly he wondered if their wives would recognize them. A hundred sets of Furyon eyes and a dozen glimpses of the piles of Grae dead, and he began to wonder, have I gone too far?
The thought fled his mind. Alone, he rode to the grand courtyard at the city’s center. The elegant hedges and old-growth oaks beyond the courtyard’s iron gates had seemed so full of life only yesterday, but today their leaves were brown, many littering the grey grass like dead sparrows tumbled from their nests. He walked in the trees’ shadows. He felt watched, judged by the ghosts of the Grae. The white spire rising from the courtyard’s center belonged to Nentham Thure, or so he had heard. By the look of its broken gate and fallen guardsmen, the Furyons had already broken through. A pity, he thought as he approached. Would’ve liked one night of sleep in the highest room without them.
His reverie was broken. He heard a crash, and he saw the tower doors ripped from their hinges and discarded onto the marble stairwell below. Nim. He shook his head. What are you doing now? He watched Nimgabul emerge from the tower, a Mooreye man collared in his Dageni-mailed fist. The Furyon warlord’s movements were mechanical, the swivel of his neck like an owl leering at its prey. No sooner did Archmyr narrow his eyes than Nimgabul, his black blade already dripping with blood, slit the Mooreye man from belly to throat and cast his body like a rag doll down the tower stairs. The crack of bones splintering like firewood split the air, and then there was silence.
I know who that was. He dropped down from his horse and approached the man, whose face was like a broken mirror. Nentham Thure. You should’ve known better, Lord Thure, than to make bargains with monsters.
The slaughter was done. The rain was ended, the fires dying down. The Grae survivors, few though they were, either fled into the fields or huddled inside their homes. Archmyr let them be for now. After gathering his captains and issuing a command that no more should be killed today, he rode down the same street that he had only a half day before, though to hardly the same sight. The stones beneath his horse’s hooves were crushed to rubble and stained with ash. The city’s largest streets were clear, but the alleys were stuffed with smoldering timbers and the bodies of the Grae. Most creatures of the earth would have been heartbroken, but not he. To him the ruins were a sight for sore eyes, a monument to his mastery over the Grae. He circled the city once, looking down upon all his treachery had wrought.
Tyberia, he scoffed at the Furyons beneath his breath. Your Emperor, the fool, knows you nothing like I do. Look at what you’ve done. There’ll be no new nation. There’ll be only death.
Of all the structures of Mooreye, only one seemed appropriate for him to occupy. Nentham’s tower stood firm, a beacon of white marble rising above the stratum of smoke. When he returned to it at midday, he crossed the rotting courtyard
and laid his eyes upon a work of cruelty performed by men other than the Furyons. Ten withered bodies, strung together like puppets, hung from the cullis above the tower’s main gate. Their raiment was rich, but their faces gaunt and their eyes plucked out by the crows. He snorted at the sight. What did they do to deserve hanging? He wondered. Prepare an ill meal? Miss a spot of dust on the sill?
He crossed the courtyard, tethered his horse to a tree, and climbed the marble stairs. The smoke from the burning city heaved in great plumes all around him, but the tower was unscathed. He clapped his booted feet down into the tower’s first room, with its vaulted ceiling and upward-spiraling stairs, and he faced the dour Furyon warriors standing motionless about the room. More dead were strewn here, more skewered souls of Mooreye.
“Unfit.” He scowled at the Furyons. “Scour it clean. Bury or burn these bodies. Scrub the floors until you can see your reflections. When you’re done, see to my horse. His coat’s covered in ash, and he’ll be hungry.”
The Furyons regarded him coldly, but went about their work as ordered. Hardly breaking stride, he climbed the spiral stairs to the tower’s highest chamber and seated himself upon Nentham’s throne. Up here it was quiet, almost peaceful. The breeze blew in through windows lining every wall. The scent of death was absent. Elegant statues of women in all manner of undress lined the Lord of Mooreye’s chamber, along with tapestries of Grae lords, polished suits of armor, and weapons from every known nation, including several Dageni blades. Tearing off his armor, he sank into the lavish pillows of Nentham’s chair as though it had always been his. Lounging like a lion, he shut his eyes and slipped to the edge of sleep and beyond.
The day crept by. He lay amid the pillows for hours unknown, his sleep wretched. He dreamed far deeper than he wanted, and his nightmares rivaled reality for their bleakness. He felt the faces of the dead watching over him. He dreamt of Grae crypts far beneath the earth, stretching into places impossible. Many millions of bones crunched beneath his boots, some of them brittle and dry, and others stirring to unlife as he slunk through corridors cold and empty.
Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1) Page 63
