Roars of War: The War for the North: Book Two

by Sean Rodden

Alvarion could not decide whether Tulnarron believed the madness of which he spoke belonged to the Erelian, to the enemy, or to the Lord of the Fiannar himself. Perhaps a combination of two, or of all three. Possibly of none, but of another madness altogether. Alvarion shrugged inwardly – he did not care overmuch. Nor did it matter.

  “You are our strongest sword, Tulnarron,” the Lord of the Fiannar asserted evenly to the blood-drenched phantasm before him. “The Leech would be most negligent should it not seek to remove you and your Host from the tale of this conflict as early in its inception as possible.”

  Tulnarron said nothing. Sometimes even madness made good sense.

  “You are prepared, Master Tulnarron?” enquired Lord Alvarion. “You will be vastly outnumbered. And surely the foes you will face will be more in number and power than those that lie dead here now.”

  Tulnarron chuckled deeply.

  “Even so, my Lord. I find Unmen… tedious.”

  Alvarion nodded, and donned once more the splendid Helm of Defurien. Wide white wings stretched from silver temples like deathly arms embracing the world at war. Beneath the golden brow of the Helm, the light of death shimmered palely in the Lord’s argentine eyes. And at last his lips accomplished something that might have passed for a smile.

  “Then for the sake of us all, good Tulnarron of Arrenhoth, I pray you endure the lazy lash of tedium a little longer.”

  The day darkened. A great grey bow of arcus cloud rose in the east and rolled relentlessly westward, a hoary host of mummified dead marching in ominous silence, struck blood-purple where shafts of stubborn sunlight pierced its pallid mass. Slowly, steadily, the blue fields of heaven were trampled into a monochrome morass under the soundless thuds of unnumbered bandaged feet. Day succumbed to a pervasive pall. And Death’s shroud floated down upon the Seven Hills of Eryn Ruil.

  The soul-shuddering shriek of the Leech announced the renewed assault. Crimson pennons snapped above teeming legions as the behemoth that was the Blood King’s army moved. The ground groaned under its monstrous weight. Drums boomed like the hearts of angry gods. Deep-throated battle-bellows beat at the sky.

  As the Erelian Commander had predicted, the northern hill of Lar Thurrad was struck first. And was struck hard. Rank upon ravening rank of ironclad Unmen assaulted the shining forest of Fiannian swords and spears. And rank upon ravening rank of ironclad Unmen were thrown down, their wretched ruin wrought of cold northern steel.

  But again there was no relent, again no surcease. Unman after Unman after Unman clambered over the corpses of their dead brethren to assail the Deathward who defended Lar Thurrad. Persistent, pervasive, they surged against the line, some casting terrible hooked wire nets over their brave foes, dragging a number from their feet and wresting a few from their steeds, then setting upon them like feral dogs. And valiant Fiannar began to die. Here and there along the line, the blood of dying Deathward painted the air pink. Unmen howled with black hope and intensified their attack, urgent, insistent. Life meant little, death mattered less.

  But the Fiannar held the line.

  Then came the Urkroks, huge and savage, wielding gargantuan clubs, massive mauls and maces, and hammers as heavy as the very anvils of Fiannian metalsmiths. The powerful rock ogres pounded down the tall shields that bore the Steel Feather of the House of Dalorion, and the lines of Fiannar faltered, threatened to fail. Berradan, burly Master of the House of Shon Rodain, was battered from the back of his mirarran and pummeled into a mire of his own blood and bone.

  Many valiant Deathward warriors died.

  Others lived.

  And did not yield.

  Sennadan, stalwart son of Berradan, struck down the horrific fiend that had so savagely slain his dear father. He then hoisted high the shining Silver Star standard of his noble House, his head cast back, mouth stretched wide in a roar of rage and sorrow – and his wrathful folk assembled about their new Master and fought as only true scions of the lost ancient Houses of Shonnahan and Roidarrin might fight.

  And black-haired Accamon, sister-son to the Master of the House of Mirmaddon, battled over the broken body of Diamine like a man gone mad. Sweet darling Diamine, beautiful beloved and betrothed of Accamon – had she not been barren of womb she would not have spurned the asylum of Allaura, would not have followed brave Taresse to war, to fight at Eryn Ruil, to fight at Accamon’s side. But Diamine had followed Taresse. Diamine had fought. And fought well. The torn remnants of Unmen and the huge carcasses of Urkroks heaped about her fallen form testified that her slim shimmering spear had been as deadly as any Deathward weapon below Lar Thurrad that day. Accamon’s own bright blade was hewing past hard Urkrok hide as the last light of life leaked from Diamine’s widened eyes. In his red-sighted wrath, he did not see that Diamine had departed. But he knew.

  To the south, where the White Swan of the House of Serra-Collean soared over the crimson carnage of combat, fearless Fiannar and fearsome foe fought for the low ground between Lar Thurrad and Lar Fannan. Swords sliced, spears pierced, shields shuddered. Unmen and Urkroks were thrown down. Wicked iron blades slashed, mauls pummeled, nets snared. Fiannar fell.

  And still the White Swan flew.

  “We can delay no longer, Southman,” Harlastian of the Grey Watch hissed between gritted teeth. “Fiannar are dying.”

  Commander Axennus Teagh looked down upon the battle from the oak-capped heights of Caramel Dark, one booted foot pattering restlessly in its stirrup, his lean strong arms folded across his bronze breastplate. His cloak billowed behind him, chasing, catching and containing a renegade gust of wind that had invaded his place of concealment. His eyes glittered like diamonds.

  “Soon, friend Harlastian,” Axennus replied softly, succinctly. “Soon.”

  The day, the battle, the long death dragged on.

  In time, and despite the skill and valour of the determined Deathward of the House of Serra-Collean, the section of the line so desperately held by them buckled, bent in upon itself, thinned toward breaking. The enemy pressed tirelessly forward. At the fore stormed giant Wulfings of wintry Var, their pale eyes wild with war-madness, roars of insane rage bursting from berserker breasts, great double-bladed battle-axes whirling, threshing, reaping. Before this fresh foe the Fiannar of the House of Serra-Collean fell back further, forming a defensive shield wall behind a low ridge of limestone that ran the length of the vale between Lar Thurrad and Lar Fannan.

  There they stood. There they fought. There they held.

  For a time.

  Then a wedge of monstrous Urkroks broke through.

  “Now.”

  The word slid from Axennus Teagh’s throat as red-hot steel would slip from a sheath of white ice. At the Erelian’s side, Harlastian of the Grey Watch sprang into motion. The Watchcaptain’s mirarran breasted through the screen of scrub oak, reared upon her hind legs, forelegs and fetlocks flailing the air. Coloured flags snapped briskly in deft and callused hands. Veiled daylight glinted in cold silvery eyes turned expectantly northwestward. And far away, atop the towering pillar of the Warwatch, other flags rippled as signals were received, acknowledged, transmitted. The entire exchange was completed in a matter of heartbeats.

  Quick, pounding heartbeats.

  Screaming heartbeats.

  Now.

  Like a great iron arm swiveling on a well-oiled joint, three hundred Fiannar mounted on mirarra swung northward from the rear ranks of those that fought before Lar Fannan. Another two hundred came afoot, close and quick in the lingering rumble of hammering hooves. Grim warriors of the Grey Watch, their ever-bare blades aglow with blood and cloudlight, followed valiant Varonin into the fury of the fray at the foot of Lar Thurrad. And fell fighters of the House of Defurien hurried under the Flaming Sword at the beck and back of their terrible Lord. For Alvarion was always foremost in the fight, his fiery brand cutting a swath through flesh and metal as a scythe might reap ripened wheat.

  Within moments, the wedge of Urkroks was obliterated.

  The northe
rn hill held.

  But the forces defending the central hill were substantially reduced, and of necessity the spaces between warriors widened. The Fiannian lines thinned perilously. And both Lord and Marshal had hurried north, leaving lesser captains to command the defense of Lar Fannan.

  A great black panther watching a wounded deer, smelling warm wet blood on the wind, the enemy sensed weakness, debility, deficiency, and hastened to exploit these, striking swiftly and brutally at Lar Fannan. Unmen swarmed. Urkroks rampaged. Wulfings berserked. But the thralls of the Blood King were once again denied.

  For the entire strength of the House of Cilcannan had hastened northward from Lar Theas to bolster the depleted ranks of Lar Fannan’s defenders. They savagely pummeled the horde of attackers like the very Raging Bull under which they charged, and they gored foe and fiend with four hundred long hard horns of merciless Fiannian steel.

  But only the men and women of the Host of Arrenhoth remained to protect the blood-soaked slopes of Lar Theas. Six hundred Fiannar. Two lines deep. Almost a spear’s length between each warrior. A defense stretched perilously thin. A fawn separated from the herd – separated and abandoned to its fate.

  The Leech screeched.

  There was an anxiousness, an elevated expectancy in that sharp shrill sound. An anticipation of satiation to appalling thirst.

  The shriek of demonic bloodlust.

  Calling for the kill.

  The sun was slipping down along the western curve of the sky, throwing the elongated shadows of Sentinel Ridge and the Warwatch across the three contested hills of Eryn Ruil. Under those gathering glooms, behind those interposing hills, the armies of the Free Nations huddled in ensorcelled secrecy and something nigh upon silence, listening to the clash and crash of arms, the rumbling of hooves, the curdling cries of the dying.

  Waiting.

  West of Lar Theas, seven thousand spirited warriors of Rothanar blotted sweat from their palms, felt their heartbeats accelerate and intensify, thudding like thunder in their breasts. Every man there breathed a little more shallowly, gripped their weapons a touch more tightly. Eyes shone, teeth grated, sweat trickled. The Roths were not a patient people. War made them less so.

  Nevertheless, they waited.

  The one hundred veterans of the Republican Legion’s North March Mounted Reserve watched from the crown of Caramel Dark. The drear cloud-cast gloom, the deepening shadow of the great trees, the creeping grey tide of evening, all combined to conceal and neutralize the brightness of Erelian blue and the glister of polished bronze. Horses and riders stood still and silent; only puffs of hot breath from flared nostrils betrayed that either man or beast was animate and alive. As though it was aslumber, the Blue Banner hung limp and lax on its long staff.

  “They will come now, Bron,” Axennus predicted. “They will come for these heights.”

  “They will have seen Harlastian.”

  The Commander shrugged. “Whether they saw our Fiannian friend or not, they will come. They must come. They will have no choice.” He glanced toward the Fian upon his left. “Ready the green flag, Watchcaptain.”

  Harlastian of the Grey Watch nodded nearly imperceptibly within the deep dark hollow of his hood.

  Bronnus Teagh held the reins of his mount in a grip of iron. His grizzled jaw clenched like a vise. His eyes had darkened beyond their usual deep brown, his heart thumped weightily within him, the line of his mouth was straight and sere. From his vantage, the vista of war below and north of him was a chaos of killing and carnage, a monstrous macabre morass, ugly, gruesome, ghastly.

  And then the Iron Captain saw a thing amidst that horrid scene that brought light back to his eyes, that buoyed his heavy heart, and set his lips atremble as they formed a single murmured word:

  “Beautiful.”

  Tulnarron, Master of the House of Eccuron, stood some distance in front of his meagre six hundred. And there he waited, a crimson colossus upon trampled corpse-strewn grasses, facing the onslaught of the enemy with a composure surpassing serenity. His greatsword plunged into the earth at his feet, a muscular forearm resting casually on each quillion, his strong fingers intertwined in nonchalance, the giant Fian watched the rapid approach of the foe with red-rimmed eyes of simmering rage.

  And he smiled.

  There came Unmen. Thousands and thousands of Unmen. And Urkroks. Hundreds and hundreds of Urkroks. And at their backs marched knots of Graniants, towering stone giants of the enslaved East, twice the height of men, gargantuan breakers of boulders and bones. And half-Urks, malformed malevolent blasphemies, sinister spawn of unholy unions between Urkrok and Unwoman, and between rock ogress and stone giant – this last atrocity made all the more hideous and horrible for the scaly hides they wore and the steely spiked spines they bore. And there also came demons. Deathless devils of the First World. Golgarrai of the blighted sky. Demogorgai of the bloated earth.

  But the Master of the House of Eccuron was completely unperturbed.

  Alone at the fore, Tulnarron wrenched his great blade from the ground, took the grip in two fierce and powerful fists. The rillagh across his heart blazed. His smile widened, exposing flawless blood-blotched teeth. The seething wrath in his gaze gave to a gay grey gleam. A low bellicose chuckle reverberated in his breast, growing, amplifying, rising into laughter. And he recalled and shouted aloud the words he had so recently and so rashly spoken –

  “Even sooooo!!!”

  And then the enemy was on him.

  Initially, the slaughter before Lar Theas seemed that it might prove absolute. So much blood, so much pain, so much death. Heads flying from mutilated bodies. Corpses flung about like gruesome dolls. The air stained with hot damp blood-mist. The misfortunate fallen trampled under both boot and beast. A grotesque chorus of thousands screaming, screeching, shrieking a heinous dirge of death, of destruction, of defeat.

  So many dead. So very many.

  And all upon the steel of but six hundred Deathward swords and spears.

  But then came the half-Urks, that horrifying horde of abominations, stronger than Unmen, more cunning than rock ogres, some nearly so gargantuan and so great as Graniants. They fought in fast formation, spiked and armoured, wielding strange and terrible arms that were neither axe nor sword, nor even anything in between. With these they threshed the air, and foul wind flew from their black iron.

  The fell folk of the House of Eccuron gave neither ground nor quarter, but stood with their Master, fighting as he fought, slaying as he slew. Tulnarron no longer laughed, but battled with an intense and silent fierceness, for slaughter had given to ferocious combat, close and brutal and desperate, and the scions of Eccuron were sorely pressed.

  And once again gallant Fiannar began to die.

  Leather-winged golgarrai rose from the main mass of the Blood King’s army, flapping inelegantly for the cloud-fettered firmament. They circled above the fray, like so many vast chiropteran vultures, then swooped screeching from the sky, eyes aflame, fanged maws agape, metallic talons reaching to rend.

  But some of the flying fiends that fell did so headlong, on flightless wings, crashing gracelessly amidst the bedlam of battle, dead before their foul demonic flesh struck the earth.

  For such was their doom as decreed by gallant Prince Thrannien of the Neverborn.

  Sigh, creak, strum, whirrrrr!

  Swift and sure were the Sun Lord’s long golden arrows, bright bolts of beautiful death streaking in the deepening dark. High atop towering Warwatch, the ivory bow of the Athain Prince sang its sweet song. The soft sigh of shaft sliding from quiver; the quick creak of drawn ivory; the strum of string released; the racing whir of fire in the sky.

  Again and again, a rapid repeated refrain: Sigh, creak, strum, whirrrrr!

  Silmarien of the Grey Watch bore wide-eyed witness, the young warder struck slack-jawed and speechless by the Sun Lord’s unreal speed and accuracy in such darkness at such distance. All Fiannar were accomplished archers, but even Sandarre’s uncanny skill with the
bow did not approach the fantastic ability of this bowman of the Undying Folk.

  And Prince Thrannien’s proficiency was rendered all the more incredible by Watcher Spedamon’s words:

  “They are golgarrai. Immortal demons with hides like steel. Even the Sun Lord’s arrows might fall back from such armour at this range.” A poignant pause. “But these demons must see, thus their eyes are not so shielded – therefore through the eye, then, to the brain.”

  Silmarien nearly swooned in amazement.

  Through the eye? At this distance??

  Thrannien nocked another arrow to the string, drew, let fly. Moments later – and nearly a mile away – another golgarra plummeted lifeless through the gloaming.

  “Teller of the Tale!” Silmarien exclaimed.

  Another gold-fletched arrow soughed from its quarrel.

  Sigh, creak, strum, whirrrrr!

  Death.

  But the golgarrai were many. Very many. And even the Sun Lord Thrannien could not possibly shoot them all. Silmarien watched in silent horror as dozens of demons dove down upon the desperate Deathward defenders of Lar Theas.

  But Spedamon of the Grey Watch wore something of a smile, however grim and grisly, upon his weathered face. And his eyes glistered like ice, only colder. Harrumphing, the venerable veteran Watcher swung his strange wheeled chair about and faced the cloud-crowned mountains that reared above the River Ruil. He placed two bony fingers in his mouth and whistled, long and shrill.

  And the great throkka of the North rose from their rocky roosts upon Rothrange and soared shrieking into the sky.

  “You see, my dear boy,” intoned Spedamon through a crack-toothed smile as the war-hawks of the Fiannar dove down upon the scattering golgarrai, terrible talons splaying, razor-sharp beaks shredding, “the Prince of the Neverborn need not toil alone at this good work.”

  Young Silmarien smiled. His eyes gleamed. He then nodded toward the edge of the arboreal heights of Caramel Dark, where a bright green flag flared like an eternal emerald flame in Watchcaptain Harlastian’s upraised hand.

  Silmarien’s smile widened into a wild grin.