Like a black star falling from the sky, he descended the stairs to the tower bottom, thinking hard about what he desired. The Furyons are beyond my command, and the Grae army unexpected. If the Grae should attack and win, I might flee this place and wage war in another land. But if the dead men win…his smile spread…the Emperor will have no choice but to thank me. The Moor’s Eye being destroyed won’t matter if yet another Grae host falls to me.
By the time he reached the courtyard and sidled down the same stairs Nimgabul had hurled Lord Nentham’s corpse, he heard the thunder of the approaching host. The Grae cavalry were already attacking the westernmost gate, he presumed. He strode casually into the courtyard grass, watching as the streets ran black with Furyons eager to kill. He would have screamed at them to rally and assume the formations that had won them all their other battles, but he held his tongue. Let me watch for a while. Let me see who seizes the upper hand.
Sensing a bloody battle to come, he retreated to Nentham’s tower and climbed to the top again. He heard distant screams, shouts, and the crush of Grae steel against Dageni mail. He clasped his armor to his breast and his swords to his waist, but instead of rushing to the warfront, he went to the window, from which he watched the battle unfold.
At the shattered western gate, five hundred Furyons made their stand. They looked stark and fearless upon the ashen street, eager to drink of battle as though it were wine. It hardly mattered. They were no match for the numbers cresting over them. The Grae host bore down with terrifying speed, first with horsemen, then with swordsmen. Lances cracked and shattered against Dageni breastplates, but did their work all the same. The Furyons were thrown down by the hundred, and Grae swordsmen swarmed over them. The enemy has learned much. Archmyr placed his palms on the sill and counted the dying. The Grae swordsmen did not try to carve through the Dageni plates, but simply battered the Furyons to the ground, stripped off their helms, and cut their throats.
The Furyons had numbers on their side, but the Grae possessed speed, fury, and the passion we lack. The Grae poured into the city like a flood, taking one gate, then two, then two more. It was all the easier for them; the Furyons had done nothing to repair the damage they had done upon invading the city. The Grae horsemen trampled some thousand Furyons while taking hardly a loss, for the Furyons in their bloodthirst made no effort to take up their Dageni pikes and hold a line. After pouring through the gates, the Grae reformed into two groups, each ten thousand men huge. Both halves fell like hammer strokes upon the western quarter of the city, overtaking scattered Furyons by the thousand, shattering units that had yet to take shape. Sparks flew as silver swords struck ebon armor. Fires sprang back to life as the Grae hurled torches into buildings haunted by Furyon crossbowmen. Horses ran roughshod over Furyon knights, breaking bones and cracking skulls without so much as denting their Dageni armor. He wished he could see the faces of the men on both sides. Nothing enchanted his heart like the sight of desperate men slaying one another.
The streets, already thick with ash, turned red. As the Grae sluiced inward, they carved the Furyons in the city outskirts to tatters. Hundreds upon hundreds were killed or maimed before they had wit enough to mount an organized defense, their black forms crumpling on the streets like swatted insects. A fine surprise, Archmyr mused. But only the beginning. The deeper the Grae pressed, the more the Furyons awoke from listlessness. Alley to alley, dwelling to dwelling, pitched battles broke out. Many of the Grae broke off to attack smaller groups of Furyons, and their crushing charge was slowed. That he saw only fragments of the battle mattered little. He imagined it better than any man could, knowing at a glance which pockets of Furyons would live and which would die. From the smaller skirmishes he witnessed, the rivers of silver crashing into lakes of black, he began to deduce how it would play out. Poorly for both sides, he reckoned. Leaving the gates broken made it too tempting for the Grae to resist.
The Grae carved their way deeper still. The Furyons, fully roused, climbed like ants out of charred pits, crumbling dwellings, and fallen towers. They scurried to battle in droves, driven more by death-lust than by any command shouted by their captains. In numbers the Grae clearly had not expected, the Furyons flung themselves against the knights marching down Mooreye’s streets. Grae columns were carved in half, men in bright armor riddled with black darts, and horses felled by the score. Plumes of ash spread into the air where dead Grae fell, and silver limbs were sheared off by Dageni blades as though the Grae were made of paper. But look…we’re still losing ground, Archmyr noted. Our discipline...gone. Everything I taught them…forgotten.
Enduring, the Grae host cut still deeper into the city, drawing ever nearer to Nentham’s tower.
Palms lying placidly on the sill, Archmyr focused all his attention on the largest group of them. Some two thousand Grae, boldest of the lot, pressed forward on the widest of the Mooreye streets. Their captain rode at their front, shaping many hundreds of Grae riders like a spearhead against which the Furyons shattered and broke. With lances and spears, the Grae riders made a bristling, impassable wedge, while the swordsmen behind them swarmed like angry hornets, stinging any small group of Furyons who tried to cut through. How many hundreds of Furyons they slew, Archmyr dared not guess. He could almost see their faces from his window, and it seemed to him the Furyons died willingly, for the only cries of pain he heard came from the Grae.
Another thousand men dead, and he pulled his palms off the sill. They’ll come here, he realized of the Grae. They’ll want to capture this tower.
He drank deeply from his chalice, wiped his mouth, and made for the door. As he walked down through the hollow tower, he took each stair with measured apathy, not caring that he should march faster, not willing to admit he might be afraid. His boots struck the marble like claps of thunder, matching the rhythm of the blood thumping in his heart. His gaze cut to the long shadows given life by the grey sunlight slicing through each window. There were no Furyons here, only him. The sounds of the battle felt muted, and in the last moments before emerging into the courtyard, he laid his palms on the tower doors and dwelled a last few breaths in silence. This is what I’ve earned. This is what I wanted. They’ll destroy one another, and I’ll exist in the void that lives afterward. Only…it’ll be fleeting. The war will go on forever. Even if we lose today, the Emperor is coming.
He pushed the doors open. The silence shattered. He walked down the bloodstained stairs and stood in the dead courtyard grass. The gardens around him were sickly, slain by the Furyons’ presence. The vast circular courtyard was like a dead island now, the only place in the city not ravaged by fighting. Its iron fence stood in a great ring, its spade-topped bars the only thing between him and complete chaos. He turned in a slow circle and saw battles raging on all sides. A cacophony of pikes, swords, arrows, and quarrels clattered so furiously it seemed the entire world was at war. I should join them. He smirked as he strolled on a cobbled lane between four withered trees. If I kill the Grae captain, it’ll turn the battle one way.
But if not…
He stood in the dead, dry grass for what seemed an eternity. He heard thunder shake the earth, but not from the battle. The forefront of Chakran’s storm was here, and the clouds boiling like black broth in the world’s cauldron. He saw violet lightning rake the heavens. He glimpsed shadows darker than night roil in the sky and turn day into dusk. Malog, he trembled despite himself. Only a fool would think such power is meant for men.
When the first droplets of rain struck his pallid face and beaded like oil on his brow, he gave his attention back to the battle. The fight raged right before him, two hundreds steps away. Just beyond the courtyard gate, the clashing of thousands engulfed the city’s widest street. He saw swords bending as they struck Dageni mail. He saw ropes of blood leap into the air. Piles of silver-armored Grae waded into streams of black-mantled Furyons, and men’s bodies seized and jerked in the throes of agony. It was impossible to tell who was winning anymore, but he hardly cared. The dance
of death mesmerized him, same as always it had.
The storm closed in. The sky broke, and daggerlike rain cratered the blighted courtyard dirt. Uncaring, he stopped in the heart of the courtyard and let his sights roam across the battle. The Grae charge was broken, he saw, and almost all the riders unhorsed. A wild tide of Furyons flowed from every adjacent street, littering the alleys with Grae limbs. There were no tactics, no strategy anymore. Only brute strength and speed of swordarm had meaning.
And then the Grae reinforcements arrived.
He saw them more than he heard them, for the thunder was too loud. Some thousand Grae knights erupted from a street he could not see and waded into the Furyon flanks. They swooped across the battle on warhorses, driving back the Furyon crowd with Dageni swords and pikes plucked from the fallen. It was only a matter of time. He grinned as the Grae turned their creators’ weapons against them. I could’ve warned them, but why?
The fight became thickest just outside the courtyard gate. The broken stone street became a shore of blood and broken bones, the waves of two oceans crashing against it. It was in those moments he glimpsed the captain of the Grae. The brightly-clad warrior was younger than his brethren, but far braver and more puissant. Archmyr watched him glide through the Furyon front like water, using a stolen Dageni halberd to end the lives of some dozen foes. Wherever the dark metal collided, sparks and blood sprang into the air. The rain fell harder, a red river flowing in the streets, and still the Grae captain danced atop his white stallion, his rage a beautiful thing to behold. A champion, thought Archmyr. And here I thought they had none.
He would have watched the Grae captain for far longer, but the rain turned torrential. The battle vanished behind a black sheet, the storm falling like a mask across his sights. Patient as a vulture waiting for its prey to perish, he trotted closer to the courtyard gate. He saw the shadows of seven Grae soldiers ascend the iron bars and drop down into the grass. They were only lads, light and nimble. They sped across the cobble like arrows, making for Nentham’s tower.
“You there!” he called at them.
They halted all at once. The closest of them, a whiplike lad clad in chain and carrying a slender longsword, eyed him through the rain.
“This is my sanctuary,” he crowed at them. “Best you leave.”
The whiplike one wandered closer. “Says who?”
“Says I.”
“You’re no Fury,” another of them observed. “But not one of us either.”
He smirked. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
While they meandered closer, swords and axes at the ready, he stood as still as Nentham’s tower. His hair clung to his skin like strokes of ink across white parchment. His armor and swords, silver instead of Dageni, hung upon him like grey clouds across the dourest of days. When he smiled at the lads, they froze at ten paces.
“Who are you?” asked the whiplike one.
“Archmyr Degiliac. Son of the Lord of Shivershore, and proud exile of Thillria.”
“Never heard of you,” grumbled one. “Are you on our side…or theirs?”
“I’m on my own side. Though perhaps more theirs than yours...for now.”
That seemed to agitate them. They gripped their weapons like children clinging to their blankets, fanning out to surround him. “What are you doing in Nentham’s courtyard?” spat one of them.
“This is my courtyard, not his. Though I suppose you could argue it with him, were you able to find the urn we put his ashes in.”
“Must be a deserter,” one of the lads remarked.
“And a liar,” cracked another.
“Aye, he’s all dressed for war, but he’s as clean as my sister’s teats,” said still another. “He’d have blood on him if he were a real soldier.”
The whiplike lad, sharpest of the lot, gazed hard at him. “We should capture him. He knows about Nentham. He might know other things. Rellen would thank us.”
Archmyr paid the rain more mind than their threats, a mood which served well to unnerve them. He looked through them and toward the crackling, fuming sky. “I know plenty of things,” he told them. “But today’s not a day for sharing.”
“Suppose we make you share?”
The shadows beneath his eyes darkened. “Do not provoke me,” he growled. “I’m in no mood to kill today. I’ve enough bodies on my hands without seven more.”
The lads traded glances between him and themselves. Sizing me up, he knew. Let them. The rest of the battle will soon spill through the fence, and they’ll run.
But they did not run, and the falling rain slowed the war beyond the courtyard to a crawl. The whiplike lad glared at him like a fawn upon a wolf, seeming to recognize something sinister behind his eyes. “Wait…” the lad said to his fellows. “I know who this is. Look at his face, his armor, his swords. They’ve a name for him in the Dales. I heard a farm lass weeping about it not three nights ago. She said she saw a ghost-man burn her ma and pa. She said his face was white as death and that he was the only one to walk with the Furies and not dress as they do. This is him. It has to be. The girl called him—”
“…the Pale Knight?” He rolled his shoulders, knowing what was next.
“Kill him!” the whiplike lad shouted.
To their credit, all seven came for him. My infamy is earned, he thought as they charged. They’ve heard of me.
By the time the first bore down at him with an axe better suited for chopping wood than for war, his swords were out. He stepped aside of the clumsily-wielded axe and swept his blades out like lightning, biting off the lad’s hand at the wrist, and his leg at the knee. Two more came at him from behind, thinking the rain might shield their approach. He ducked under their slashes and counterattacked, piercing the hauberk of one just above the heart and the belly of the other where it was softest. None but the whiplike lad wore mail. A shame, he thought. What kind of father sends his boy into a thunderstorm dressed only for a drizzle?
Though not forged in Dageni, his swords made quick work of their leather shirts and sewn-in steel rings. When one hesitated, he swatted the boy’s sword to the earth and took off his head with a swipe. When two more came at him with anguished cries, he skewered them each a dozen times, his swords passing through their shirts as easily as they did the rain. Then came the whiplike lad, who lashed out with his longsword. His was a fine weapon, forged to last a hundred fights. But this one has never slain a soul, he thought as he parried each of twenty furious hacks. The Grae send children to war. Small wonder they will lose.
He relished it none. At his first opportunity, he stepped inside the lad’s guard and blasted him to the earth with his shoulder. The lad landed with a splash and a grunt, and before he could rise, Archmyr planted both his blades between the young warrior’s ribs. He felt the steel tips sink into the mud as they exited the lad’s back, and for a moment he left the swords quivering. “You should not have come here.” He leaned close to his victim, who gasped through lips wet with blood. “I would not have killed you today.”
The lad wanted to say something, but lacked the breath. His lungs were perforated, his eyes rolling back, and his mouth falling open in a silent scream. Archmyr rarely paid respect to those whose lives he ended, but this lad he eased into death’s embrace with whispers. Sleep, young Grae. You’ll not want this world anyhow, not with men like me in it. Sleep and be grateful.
Sleep...
All was silent again, all but the rain and the wind. He extracted his swords and backed away from the fallen lad. The earth around him was all blood and muck, the redness swirling in seven small pools. He was surprised to feel sick at the sight. He had spoken truly to the lad, but only now realized it. I wouldn’t have killed them. I wanted to leave.
He stood in the pooling blood, gaze lost in some faraway place. It was many breaths later when he realized the courtyard gate was open and an armored man approaching. The sounds of battle had retreated to a far and distant place in his mind, and his senses were slow to retur
n to the present.
“You!” the soldier snarled at him. “What’ve you done?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he murmured. “Run while you can. My men will swarm in from the camp north of the city. You don’t have enough to stop them.”
He faced the Grae soldier. The champion, he realized. Brave to come in here all alone. The Grae plainsman was a tall, sturdy sort, lordly and fair in a way only the Grae seemed able to be. His tabard was saturated with rain and blood, but was still impossibly blue. Archmyr supposed himself and the Grae man were opposites in every way. Mostly because he’ll soon be dead, and I’ll be alive.
The Grae champion could have fled, but instead knelt before the body of the whiplike lad. “Therian…” He spoke to the boy as if he were still alive. “No…you…why? Your shield…why’d you climb the gate?”
Had Archmyr been able cast a shadow, it would have fallen long across the weeping Grae man. As it was, the hour was too dark for shadows. “You weep for one when so many have died,” he said. “There’s no sense in it.”
The look the Grae gave him contained pure contempt. “I weep for all of them,” he spat. “Who are you? You’re not a Fury. Why kill him?”
“I’m the Pale Knight. You may have heard of me. Seems all I do is kill. Though this one I regretted.”
The Grae man rose. Tears and rain ran in rivers down his cheeks. His eyes looked red, aflame with misery and fatigue.
Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1) Page 72
