Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1)

by J. Edward Neill

  Nimgabul met Chakran’s gaze. No light lived in the warlord’s eyes, and no breath passed between his lips. “We are beyond death, my master,” the warlord rumbled. “The Grae should be happy to bleed on our blades. All men should. We’re ready for Tyberia.”

  “Good.” Chakran glared Daćin’s way again. “Let us go.”

  They marched. He had no choice but to follow. Trailing in their shadow, he felt diminished, his power bloodlessly wrested. But I’m still a soldier of Furyon. If I help defeat the Grae, all will change. Chakran will send me home, where better things await me.

  He thought many things as he marched behind his Emperor, but put his faith in none of them. In the fields beyond Chakran’s pavilion, he saw Furyon’s soldiers closer than in days. Many were his former men, soldiers whose skins were unscathed, but whose eyes were like pools of dark water. Others had been the Pale Knight’s soldiers, with wounds still leaking, limbs missing, and burns so horrid he saw their blackened bones jutting from their cheeks. No matter whose men the soldiers had been, they were ghoulish now, dead but not dead, stronger and stranger than ever. My brothers. He looked them over, recognizing many who had been friends. It’d be better if I were like you.

  “Invincible,” he heard Chakran rumble as they made their way to the front lines. “Do you see them, my son? Do you see what we’ve become?”

  He walked faster, striding side-by-side with the Emperor through the black grass and shallow pools of rainwater. Nimgabul glared suspiciously at him, but he ignored it. “I did not expect this, Sire,” he said to the Emperor. “That we should change like this—”

  “Unexpected, yes,” Chakran grunted. “But not unwanted. Malog will have what it wants, no matter the method.”

  “Beg pardon, Sire,” he dared. “You are the Emperor. Malog is yours by rights. It does as you command. So it is written, and so every Furyon knows.”

  “Is that what you believe?” Chakran asked.

  “It is.”

  The Emperor’s haunted stare silenced him. The battle, he cautioned himself to say no more. Think only of the battle. Nothing else matters.

  The entire legion was moving now. It felt strange to hear no commands shouted and no drums beating, and yet the men moved all as one, directed as if by a singular voice. He marched with the vanguard, plodding across muddy earth, wading through swordlike grass, and ducking beneath the drooping arms of dying orchard trees. Absently, he plucked a ragged leaf from a branch and watched it fall like a broken feather into the grass. It was still summer in Graeland, but as the leaf fell it came apart, its fragments catching in the wind like ashes.

  And then the marching stopped.

  Rain began to fall.

  Thunder rattled like dead men’s breaths inside a million bare ribcages, and the morning sky darkened ever more.

  The Furyon line halted, looking hard as a sword’s edge, a line of a thousand men to his right and left. As the rain peppered his shoulder plates, he looked across the prairie to where the first Grae division approached, and then he looked to the sky. The morning’s ghostly luminosity shined through narrow cracks in the clouds, violet shafts of light like lanterns firing in a forest on the blackest of nights. The rain wept more than it fell, dashing his cheeks so sharply he dropped his helmet over his head. I blend in now, he thought as the hunk of Dageni closeted his sights. No one will know me for a living man.

  Just ahead, he saw Chakran flex his gauntleted fingers and roll his neck, the bones popping beneath the old man’s armor. A moment of glaring at the Grae, and the Emperor freed his sword from its sheath. The weapon of Malog thrummed, its surface seemed to scream. Chakran jabbed the obsidian spoke skyward as if to prick the heavens for its blood, and the storm seemed to acquiesce, obeying him as its master. In his next breaths Chakran began to chant, though the words were in no language Daćin knew. For which I am glad.

  There, across the far fields of Mooreye, the Grae host drew nearer. He pushed his way to the Emperor’s side, standing on the front line the same as a hundred times before. For a moment, he felt like a commander again, counting the enemy in his mind, sensing their strengths and weaknesses. Three thousand Grae horsemen, he reckoned. Formed up in staggered lines to avoid Chakran’s spells. Five thousand footmen; with maces and flails instead of swords, far better to smash us with than swords. Two thousand archers in a half-circle behind the rest; ready to fire on us if the wind permits. And another four divisions, same as the first, closing in on our left and right. The Grae learn fast, but it won’t be enough. I might be the only Furyon casualty today.

  Sarik was nowhere in sight, and Nimgabul no longer watched him. Beneath his helm, he felt anonymous, another insect in the swarm. All the greater was his surprise when Chakran lowered his sword and gazed sidelong at him. The Emperor was the only Furyon in a thousand not wearing his helm, and behind his deathly pallor, Chakran looked almost thoughtful. “Daćin.” His name fled the Emperor’s tongue less harshly than in the tent. “Do you know why I chose you as Commander?”

  “I knew in Morellellus, Sire,” he answered. “But no longer.”

  “Because you were different. There were many in Malog who said you did not belong, that you were too careful, too deliberate. But I knew better, and I convinced them. You’ve done Furyon well. You’ve won every battle. But this war is no longer for Furyon. This, you must understand.”

  “Sire, you condemn me in one breath, and praise me in the next. Forgive me, for I do not understand.”

  “Look at the field,” said the Emperor. “What do you see?”

  “I see numbers, Sire, greater than any we have faced. We’re surrounded on three sides, with a dead city at our backs.”

  “And?”

  “If this were any other day, I would doubt our chances.”

  “But today?”

  “I…” He looked at the nearest thousand Furyons, whose helmets were on, but whose eyes shone like burning stars between the slits. “The Grae don’t know what they face. They’re doomed.”

  “Tyberia.” Chakran blinked, and his eyes blazed like all the others. “Reborn now.”

  The Emperor jabbed his sword skyward. The black thorn of obsidian thrummed, quivering like a weathervane in Chakran’s grasp. The Grae approach slowed. Their horsemen peeled away, and the archers behind them took firing positions. Daćin looked across the grass and saw their pennants, blue and gold and silver, streaming madly in the storm’s wind. The Grae lords, he reckoned. The King and his finest. No foe of ours has ever been so brave.

  The Emperor said something in his unknowable tongue. His sword radiated a ghoulish glow, and the clouds began to twist into funnels, their throats taking the shape of a hundred hourglasses. Whatever light was left in the morning failed, the shadows growing so deep Daćin found it hard to see the Grae front lines. He swore he saw horses bucking their riders and Grae faces turning white with terror, and yet none of them fled. The rain fell harder still. The droplets were black, hissing as they wounded the earth. He looked to the Furyons beside him. They were innumerable, it seemed, a seamless mass of pikes, swords, and wicked blades which had no names. In the growing darkness, their eyes were a sea of white stars, bobbing and blinking and waiting. He knew when Chakran lowered his blade, they would break rank and charge the Grae, and the war will be over.

  The rain slowed. The host of Graehelm became visible again, a mirage at the edge of a distant ocean. Chakran bellowed again, and a vast, lightless cavity appeared within the clouds, an abyss so massive all eyes were drawn to it. Daćin feared the abyss would consume both sides, but knew better in his heart. The opening salvo, he thought. All for the Grae.

  In the moments after the abyss’s creation, all sounds died save the wind’s howling. The gaping hole widened, and red strokes of lightning exploded from its center, charring the earth, rending the Grae lines ten times and ten times again. Daćin heard their screams. A hundred dead there. He saw them burning, their armor melting until naught but bones and smoking steel remained. And an
other hundred there, and another, and another.

  The lightning lasted a torturously long time before ending. As the last bolts scarred the earth, Grae horses and men burned in the Emperor’s pyres, the trails of smoke from their smoldering bodies torn to tatters by the wind. The spread of the Grae formations served them well, but thousands still died, charred in their armor like chunks of blackened meat. Pleased, the Emperor lowered his blade. The abyss closed, the rain weakened, and the wind became still as in the heart of a seaborne storm.

  When it was done, an eerie quiet prevailed. Daćin peeled his sword from its sheath upon his back and looked to the Furyons around him, whose gauntleted fingers squeezed their weapons so tightly he swore he saw the hafts bending beneath the pressure. “Attack?” he said to Chakran. “Now seems the time.”

  “Hold.” The Emperor answered.

  In the rain’s lull, he saw the Grae regrouping. This goes beyond courage. Madmen. They should fight us house to house, castle to castle, not out here in the open.

  The surviving Grae infantry and horsemen formed up in misshapen lines, while the archers stepped forth, longbows in hand and quivers flush with arrows. Their front ranks knelt in the far grass, inhaled their life’s sharpest breath, and loosed. As if welcoming the arrows, the Emperor’s wind died entirely. The rain scattered like a flock of frightened birds, and the world went quiet. If Chakran feared the storm’s momentary weakness, he showed no sign. The Emperor laughed at the approaching hail of arrows, and the Furyons beside him followed suit. “Childs’ stones,” Chakran quipped. “Farmers’ sticks and dead men’s bones. Now feel this, Graefolk!”

  The Emperor hoisted his sword again. With a slash, he commanded the wind to arise, this time more powerfully than before. Daćin felt the frigid gale rip through the air, penetrating his armor and stinging his eyes. He heard the Grae groan as the storm tore their darts down from the heavens. Most of the arrows fell far short of the Furyon front lines. The few that made it clinked off helmets and breastplates, the tips shattering and the shafts splintering.

  The Emperor looked to Nimgabul. “Order it,” he snarled. “Full attack.”

  “Sire, look,” said a masked Furyon standing near.

  A lone Grae rider took to the rotting field between armies. He’s shouting something. Daćin caught the distant trumpet of the rider’s voice. To surrender? To flee? But now’s too late.

  When the rider waved his banner and the Grae archers fired again, he almost laughed despite himself. I thought they were smarter than this.

  Clouds of Grae arrows filled the sky. Chakran faced the second storm with a lion’s grin. “Attack!” he spat at Nimgabul. With a roar, he whipped his sword about, swirling it in the way he wanted the wind to move. Daćin felt the gale stir once more, crawling through the grass like waves of cold water. He was reminded of the morning in Morellellus when the armada had set sail, the feeling in his bones as the ocean and the wind had clamored to do the Emperor’s bidding.

  Only this time, it feels different.

  The arrows reached their apex.

  The wind died.

  The grass ceased to sway, the rain became mist, and the clouds paled like the faces of fearful men. As the storm floundered, the first arrow took the Emperor in the cheek, and the second perforated his breastplate as though his armor were made of dust. Chakran tried to scream, but expelled a fountain of blood instead.

  Daćin retreated five slow steps, watching as his countrymen collapsed in droves. The Grae arrows hissed like serpents, staking soldiers in their chests, heads, and necks, felling men like trees in a forest. He saw Sarik collapse, thrice pierced. All that remained of the squire’s Dageni mail was a cloud of black grit and ashes, little different than the leaf he had seen crumbling on his way to the warfront. He lifted his sword, but felt it disintegrate in his hands. From tip to pommel, it turned to dust, its powdered remains fluttering into the grass. He wondered why his vision was so clear, and knew it was because his helmet had melted away. He looked to his limbs and saw his nightclothes flapping, the ashes of his armor floating away in a flurry of black snowflakes.

  The Grae charged.

  The Furyons reeled.

  He saw Nimgabul lying right where he had stood. No arrows, but dead all the same. Stripped of their profane existence, the living dead wounded in the battle for Mooreye City collapsed in droves, dying true deaths. The rest of the Furyons cried out. Their eyes were no longer white and grey, and their skins no longer ashen. Alive again, and abandoned, he thought. Malog’s killed us all.

  He wondered if another Grae would die the entire war. Every Furyon weapon became like desert sand, slipping fast between bare fingers like handfuls of powder, while every suit of armor melted. Most of the legion turned and bolted toward the camp. Others, incomprehensive of why their weapons had forsaken them, looked to one another with horror in their eyes.

  The wheels in his mind never stopped spinning. He heard a Grae shout across the field, and rather than run he knelt and lifted Sarik’s carcass over his shoulder like a shield. He felt the thud of two arrows strike the squire’s limp body, and shuddered when a cold scarlet river sluiced down his arm. By the time the fourth and fifth waves of Grae darts fell, he found himself kneeling in an ocean of blood. The storm had stopped, but it seemed the sky was raining red.

  The Grae riders came.

  The Emperor was the first they finished. Already mortally wounded, Chakran took a lance in his chest and a warhorse’s hoof against his head. If Malog were watching, it did nothing to help. The Emperor sagged, his heart burst behind his ribs, his skull fractured. No second sputter of life arrived to animate him, and no shadows in the sky availed him. His obsidian weapon was last to fail, but fail it did, a thousand flakes of smoky glass drifting in a halo around his crumpled body.

  The world turned against Daćin. The clouds shattered, the earth quaked, and the Furyons died by the thousand. When all but a few of his countrymen cut and ran for the walls of Mooreye City, he remained. A Grae rider tore past him with a whip of his flail, but he shouldered the blow off. Another rider came, clad head to toe in silver mail and slashing with a mace. Before the knight could brain him, he snatched the warhorse’s reins and dragged the knight, steed and all, to the ground. The warhorse half-crushed its rider, and Daćin took up the mace. It was an inelegant weapon, twice as heavy as any Dageni tool, but it’ll do.

  The next hundred riders flew past him, making for the fleeing Furyons. Grae footmen swarmed through the grass in their wake, overtaking the front lines without resistance. My brothers are gone, he knew. I’m alone.

  The Grae were much smaller in stature than he, but outnumbered him a thousand to one. “Come!” he invited them. “Let your king stand before me!” They did not understand. They knew nothing of his victories on the fields of Davin Kal, of his years of service in the Furyon legion, or even his name. The first three who came at him, he sent sprawling into the mud with broken arms and fractured skulls. Six more attacked, two with rain-glistened spears and four with flails. He tore a spear away from one and hurled it through the neck of another. When he felt a flail’s blow break several ribs in his back, he ripped the weapon away from its wielder and crushed the poor knight’s chest with a withering stroke of his mace. They tried to surround him, but he lashed out like the Emperor’s storm, cracking knuckles, shattering knees, and splintering forearms.

  He slaughtered nine of them before they wizened. Their bodies lay around him in a gruesome ring, most of them face-down in pools of rain and black Dageni dust. Five more wailed from the wounds he gave them, holding their broken bones as they crawled beyond his reach. From somewhere in the grass, two archers took potshots at him, though only one struck home. The arrow glanced his hip, and though he felt its steel point bite into his bone, he did not fall. No arrow will kill me, he swore. Only swords for me, and you’ve none.

  A Grae rider broke off from the slaughter and galloped in his direction. On a white horse the knight circled, his face hidden behind
a silver visor. It was the same rider who had called for the second volley of arrows. Daćin challenged him without words. He plucked a flail from the grass and whirled it over his head, glaring at the rider and the twenty Grae surrounding him. Single combat, he hoped for. Give me my honor. I need none of my Emperor’s spells.

  The rider lifted his visor. He was a lean, bearded man, with shocks of hair like golden wheat and eyes as blue as frozen water in the dead of winter. “I know you,” Daćin shouted at him. “Where have we met?” The rider watched him for a time, trotting in slow circles around the ring of fallen Grae. Daćin expected gloating, but the rider had no words, only a look of sadness.

  The rider closed his visor.

  Daćin gripped his flail and waited.

  I know you understand me, he wanted to say. A Furyon never surrenders.

  The rider grunted something to his men, and the Grae stormed him. He crushed the knee of the first and the chin of the second, but then they were on him, like little spiders swarming up a tree. Fists, clubs, and flails hit him in a dozen places. Had his armor not turned to dust, he might have beaten them back, but it was gone, and the Grae broke his bones one by one. He glimpsed the rider in the backdrop, stark as a white tower against an ocean of black clouds, never once moving. Blood trickled from his nose. He felt a mailed fist crash into his ribs, a mace bludgeon his thigh, and fingers tear at the arrow in his hip. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had always known he would die this way, but the reality hurt far more than he had dreamed of.

  He crumpled to a knee, but still fought. He dragged one of the Grae down and drubbed him senseless, and punched another so hard in the groin he reckoned the lad would never breed again. And then it came. He felt a single stroke, blunt and merciless, crash into the back of his head. The world blurred. The Grae shouts became muted, all sounds fading as though he were underwater. When his muscles failed, he fell like the tallest tree in a dwindling forest. The Grae continued to kick him, but he felt nothing. His eyes slitted, his head pressed sidelong into the muck, he looked up to the Grae rider, who held his stare even as the world began to close down.