by Sean Rodden
“A single complete revolution of the Mother on her axis, kulg-Dor – a specific unit of time as measured in the world beyond and above.”
Azugar sniffed.
“The world above does not interest me, priest. Nor should it concern you.”
“I only mention it because the Dwarks haven’t been seen since the third day of battle, and the battle lasted eight entire days. I thought the duration of their absence might be… meaningful.”
The First Axe glowered, bleak and black. “What is your name again, priest?”
A weary smile. “Dandar.”
“Ah, yes. Dandar. Sorry, not great with names.”
“I know.”
“An urthron, right?”
“Yes, kulg-Dor.”
“How fortuitous.”
“Fortuitous? How so?”
Azugar did not immediately reply. He ran a gold-gauntleted hand through the bejeweled braids of his beard, eventually settling on a single gaudy strand and tugging repeatedly in distracted thought.
Dandar waited, one thick finger tapping the haft of his heavy hammer.
“I’m convinced that you’re right, priest,” rumbled the First Axe at some length. “The duration of their absence is indeed significant. Rather, the prolonged period of fighting after the disappearance of the Dwarks is significant. This entire battle was simply a diversion, an elaborate ruse to allow the Drone and his dwar-Durka to slip past us.”
Dandar’s coal-black gaze swept over the vast scope of the slaughter beneath the diamond-studded stone sky of Andur-dun under Axar. Dead demons everywhere.
“A costly ruse, kulg-Dor.”
“Very costly.”
“To what end? There is nowhere to go.”
Azugar stared. Glared. Vehemently shook his head. Bright gem-bedecked braids clattered noisily.
“There’s always somewhere to go, priest.”
The urthron closed his eyes, concentrated briefly – then flicked his eyes open and shrugged his massive shoulders.
“Well, they are gone, kulg-Dor. I can’t sense them.”
“Try harder.”
Dandar gazed at his glittering general for a heartbeat, two. Noticed an all-too-familiar madness flaring in the First Axe’s eyes, saw the rage rising there. Somewhat unnerved, the urthron knelt upon the blood-sullied floor of Andur-dun, fingers splayed widely, waves of eldritch power surging into the stone.
He waited.
And waited.
Looked up at his irascible general. Stood. Shook his head.
“Nothing?” growled Azugar.
“Not nothing, kulg-Dor. But near enough. A spoor only. Old and weak and well-masked.”
“Spoor? What kind of spoor? Dwark piss?”
“Urthvennim.”
The First Axe recoiled visibly. Not in fear, but in loathing. And seething rage. Through bared and gritted teeth, slowly, emphatically: “Where have they gone?”
Dandar instinctively stepped back and away.
“Down, definitely. And possibly…north.”
Suddenly, something issued a sibilant hiss.
Azugar snarled, spun about, directed one final furious kick at the dead sug’thok demon’s horned head, which instantly burst into a billion bits of bone and blood and brackish brain matter.
The First Axe of the Fifth Army swung back to his unsettled urthon, his black eyes blazing in wild, unhinged rage – a wrathful god of war cast in solid gold beneath the shimmering stonelight of sacred Andur-dun under Axar.
And the crazed god spoke.
Two words.
And two words only.
“Find them.”
1
THE SEVEN HILLS
“Woe to you, my Deathward sons
War and ruin westward come
Hold! Champions of the Light!
Faith! Dawn ever follows night
Alas! Bold and stalwart few
Valiant unto your very doom
Terror rends with many claws
Shadow rises, darkness falls
Stand! Though black Fate portends
The Deathward’s and the World’s ends
Fight! For those who do not war
Must surely see the dawn no more.”
Lament for the Fiannar
Early Autumn
Year of the Strype 2025
“Stand!”
The command burst from Alvarion’s breast like a hard iron thunder smelted in courage and tempered by resolve. But the order was unnecessary, superfluous – redundant even. For though they heard the cry of their glorious Lord above the cacophony of combat that concussed the Seven Hills, the Fiannar who fought there paid it little heed. They needed not be told. They were the Deathward of Defurien. They would stand.
“Stand!!”
The screeching thralls of the Blood King swarmed before the three grassy rises of Eryn Ruil, a deluge of flesh and iron drowning the Northern Plains beneath roiling waves of rage and violence. The foremost ranks of the hellish host pressed against the thin line of determined Deathward warriors that held the feet of the Hills. The onslaught was insistent, incessant, with neither relent nor surcease. The teeming minions of Shadow had come to the Seven Hills of Eryn Ruil with but one purpose, and one purpose only – to kill the hated foe. To slay Fiannar. Or be slain themselves.
And so they died trying.
Under the bloodlight of dying dawn, beneath banners bright and brave, the Fiannar fought before the Hills like lords of war. For lords of war they surely were.
Alvarion, Twelfth Lord of the Fiannar, held the centre before the hill of Lar Fannan, and about him battled the noble warriors of his high House and the ghostly warders of the Grey Watch, and the enemy died in droves upon their shining steel.
Below the northern hill of Lar Thurrad, the combined might of the Houses of Dalorion and Mirmaddon and of Serra-Collean and Shon Roidain met the foe with metal and mettle, asking no mercy and giving less.
But the slaughter wrought by the Deathward was most horrific at the foot of Lar Theas, the most southerly of Eryn Ruil’s three grassy rises, for it was there that Tulnarron, Master of the House of Eccuron, wielded his greatsword even as Death might swing its sinister scythe – though with greater ardour and wilder abandon – and his fury could be neither slowed nor stayed.
And so, while dawn died and morning aged, and as the sun bailed the last of its blood that it might rise unhindered to its zenith, the first assault upon Eryn Ruil faltered, failed. And the thralls of the Blood King withdrew hastily into the east, like a terrible tide ebbing from sharp unyielding shoals. The roar of their retreat dampened to a dull rumble, then quieted into a silent still.
In their wake, dour Deathward warriors wiped the blood of thousands from their blades.
“They flee.”
Thrannien’s words were like two wisps of white wind atop the towering rock of the Warwatch. A third and darker wisp came as the Sun Lord nocked a long sleek arrow to the string of his ivory bow. He glided from between the warders Silmarien and Spedamon, padded along the wind-shorn parapet, prowling the eastern brow of the Warwatch, the deadly point of his arrow coruscating with captured sunfire. The half-heard bellsong of his inner Light tolled deep, a sound more akin to clanging chimes of doom than to the wistful music of the Athain spirit. The Prince’s keen golden gaze surveyed the massive force of the Blood King, scouring, searching, seeking.
Hunting.
But not finding.
The heinous screech that had propelled the foe into motion had been the voice of a sumanam, a demon of the First World, one with whose loathsome ilk Thrannien was not unfamiliar. There was history there, stained and sinister, between the Athair and the sumanaur – a pernicious past, one rife with deception and depredation. An interwoven tapestry of tragedy that would surely unravel – that must unravel – in time.
Upon the Second Earth, the sumanaur were named Leech, and well-named they were. For the demon that led the Blood King’s army could have been any one among a hundred thousand – more
specifically, the demon could have been within any one of that number, parasitically feeding on its host’s soul as its namesake would grow fat and red on blood.
One in a hundred thousand.
Tulnarron, Master of the House of Eccuron, had carried word from an enigmatic enemy, the great grey giant Kor ben Dor, indicating that the Leech which marshalled the Blood King’s host had taken the body of a human child. A little girl. A crime that screamed for justice. Thrannien wondered whether such a thing existed for so heinous an atrocity.
Leech.
The Sun Lord lowered his bow.
In time.
Caramel Dark was the southmost rise of the Seven Hills of Eryn Ruil. But Caramel Dark was, in truth, not a hill at all. And its rock was not umber-coloured, not the yellowish brown of cooked sugar. Nor was it particularly dark.
A long escarpment capped with dolomitic limestone stretched northward for several leagues from the near shoulder of the Dragon’s Head, a uniclinal arm of steeply tilted rock strata thrust up from the earth, the hard dolostone overlying softer shale like a skin of scaly grey armour. The majestic monocline was half a mile high and entirely bare of vegetation for the first several leagues of its northerly run, its faces sheer, its capstone worn smooth like burnished bone, before stooping into a more gently sloping cuesta for the final mile. It was here, this last lunging mile as the hogback hunched toward the lowland, where hundreds of titanic white oaks and their smaller scrub cousins had claimed the rounded crown of the ridge, the latter entwining to shape a leafy shield perimeter, the former a soaring multitude spearing the sky. Thus, the name Caramel Dark.
Carn a Mil Darach.
Mountain of the Thousand Oaks.
Axennus Teagh peered out and down from behind a verdant screen of scrub oak at Caramel Dark’s most eastern eave. His intelligent eyes sparkled despite the veiling of the sun by stray streamers of cloud. Dappled shadows cast by dancing leaves made a morphing mask of his mien, his features frolicking with flickering patches of light and shade. Oblivious to the game of shadows being played upon his face, the Commander of the North March Mounted Reserve watched in stern silence as the enemy retreated from the killing ground before Eryn Ruil.
Beneath him, his lean grey mare swatted at a fly with her tail.
“Routed,” came a baritone voice at the Commander’s right shoulder. “Thoroughly so.”
Scattered among the great grooved boles of enormous oaks, one hundred men of the Erelian Republic’s celebrated Ghost Brigade sat astride or stood beside their mounts, collectively sharing the oddly companionable silence peculiar to soldiers in the anxious moments before battle. The sylvan semilight beneath the canopy of entwined branches had brushed the brightness from their bronze armour and crested helms, had darkened the cerulean blue of their cloaks – but to a man their eyes glinted, gleamed, and neither tree-cast shade nor lugubrious umbra of the soul could touch there.
And the thirty warders of the Grey Watch in their midst were as wraiths of the woods, sylphs of shadow, spirits of the forest seen solely from the corner of the eye.
“Skirmishers, Bron,” replied Axennus quietly.
Captain Bronnus Teagh frowned, his roughly hewn countenance clouded with circumspection. He crunched his roan stallion’s reins in his fists.
“That many? That heavily armed and well-armoured? And that persistent? I know of no skirmishers like that, little brother.”
“Now you do. The enemy was only probing, seeking weaknesses, hoping to find flaws in the Fiannar’s formation.”
“There is neither weakness nor flaw to be found, Southman,” interjected Harlastian of the Grey Watch. The Watchcaptain’s voice was hard, but not haughty. “Neither. None.”
“This is indeed so, my Fiannian friend,” agreed Axennus Teagh. “But they have found the link in the chain that is…least strong. They will endeavour to exploit this.”
“It,” Harlastian said simply.
The Commander and the Iron Captain turned, the expressive face of the former and the stony visage of the latter asking the same unspoken question.
“It,” repeated the taciturn Fian, a certain loathing abrading his usual even tone. “Not ‘he’. Not ‘they’. But it.”
Axennus and Bronnus traded sidelong looks.
“Ah,” said the Commander, arborous adumbrations flitting furtively across his features. “Of course. The Leech.”
Bronnus Teagh scowled. “It, then,” he grunted between clenched teeth.
There was a certain reluctance in the Iron Captain’s words, a specific averseness to the stranger, less mundane things in the world. But no longer did incredulity pock his voice and narrow his eyes. Disinclination was not necessarily disbelief. Not any more. The Erelian veteran had entirely abandoned the rigid – and rational – belief system he had carried with him from Hiridith. He had absorbed an astronomical array of alterations to his convictions, a seemingly endless torrent of adjustments, amendments, revisions that might have shattered the sanity of a lesser man. He had adapted. Adaptation made survival possible. It was simply what good soldiers did. And Captain Bronnus Teagh was nothing if not a good soldier.
Harlastian remained still, a grey chime awaiting wind. A pause poignant with meaning, meaning swollen with misgiving, misgiving made dark by dread. And then –
“A demon leads this army of Shadow.” Harlastian’s voice was hushed yet heavy, encumbered with an uncharacteristic avoirdupois. “A sumanam. A fiend from the First World.” His cool grey eyes moved to fall upon Axennus, and there was something akin to sympathy in those icy lights. “And until we locate and…remove… the demon from this tale, you will find your military acumen sorely tested, Commander Teagh.”
Axennus stared. A shadow born not of oak and sunlight passed across his hazel gaze, a phantom flowing over frosted jade. The Erelian’s knowledge of military tactics and strategy, however impressive and extensive, had been accumulated over a dozen years or so. His opponent was ancient, immortal – a creature that measured time not in years, not even in centuries, but in millennia. A truly daunting advantage.
And so Axennus stared. Then blinked. And smiled.
Not daunted.
“This Leech, this sumanam,” said he, softly but surely, “will not concentrate its next attack upon the part of the Fiannian formation that is…least strong. It will feign striking Lar Thurrad, but feign only, in the hope of drawing Lord Alvarion northward. But the true attack will not come against the defenders of the northern rise, nor even at the centre. Rather it will fall where the Fiannar appear strongest – upon Master Tulnarron before the southern hill of Lar Theas.”
A subtle twisting of the shadows within his cowl betrayed Harlastian’s dubious frown.
“Of this you are certain, Southman?”
The Commander nodded. “A massive assault. And soon.”
There was what might only have been described as a thing in the timbre of the Erelian’s voice that forbade doubt.
Harlastian’s steely eyes sparked within his hood. He gazed upon Commander Axennus Teagh – gazed, but did not gainsay, and the thing in the Erelian’s voice soon smoothed the frown from the Fian’s face. Three heartbeats, four, five, and the Watchcaptain yet said nothing, his lips remaining still and severe – but something of a smile glittered in his eyes, grim and hard and grey.
Harlastian turned to a Watcher at his shoulder.
“Tell Master Tulnarron to prepare.”
Without a hint of hesitation, the warder of the Grey Watch wheeled her mirarran about and raced away though the woods.
Axennus nodded, squinted eastward again to where the enormous black mass of the Blood King’s army stained the Northern Plains like a great dark cancer infesting the flesh of the world.
So many.
The Commander’s eyes flicked to the Fiannian force that held Lar Theas.
So few.
His lips slid into a small satisfied smile.
So what.
The Master of the House of Eccuron swung d
own from his thick-chested mirarran. He adjusted the weight of the greatsword strapped to his back, recklessly kicked the carcasses of a few fallen Unmen aside, and came to stand before his noble Lord and leader. Tulnarron pounded a huge fist to his heart, and blood oozed from his raiment as water would seep from a squeezed sponge. Blood that was not his own.
The Lord of the Fiannar removed the lofty helm of Defurien, fisted his own breast, and simultaneously suppressed a smile and a shudder – for the Master of the House of Eccuron appeared to him as would a ghastly apparition from a horrifying cautionary children’s tale. Or from the very pits of Hell itself.
The mighty Master commanding the Host of Arrenhoth was covered in the filth and the slime of slaughter from the heels of his boots to the war braids woven of his long black locks. Even the whites of the titanic Fian’s eyes were tinted crimson with the memory of battle-madness, and when he parted his lips to speak, his very teeth were stained red as though he had been feasting on the flesh of the fallen. Only the golden sash of his rillagh shone unsullied by the grotesque wet gristle of war.
“This is madness,” came a voice like rumbling thunder from within Tulnarron’s bosom. His brows twisted into a scowl of consternation. “Madness or folly – take your pick.”
Alvarion willed the threat of a weary smile away.
“War is madness, Master Tulnarron,” spoke the Lord of the Deathward gravely, “and one man’s folly is another’s most profound sagacity.”
Impossibly, Tulnarron’s frown blackened. His cloak hung limp and damp from his broad shoulders, a dead thing sodden with blood.
“I am here to speak strategy, not to prattle philosophically, Lord Alvarion.” A brief pause. “Respectfully.”
Lord Alvarion nodded, one corner of his lips twitching toward but not quite achieving a smile.
“I would expect of you neither more nor less, Master Tulnarron. Speak what you will swiftly, however, and with clarity, for the foe is certain to assail you before the sun is long into its descent.”
“You also, Lord? You believe as the Erelian does, that the enemy will strike hardest at Lar Theas – at the Host of the House of Eccuron – at me? Madness, I say. Sheer madness.”
