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

by Sean Rodden

  Revival. Purgation.

  And catharsis.

  And in that moment the golden light was gone.

  “You will rise now, Watchcaptain, yes?”

  Harlastian opened his eyes. Or perhaps his eyes were already open and his sight had simply been restored to him. He was only marginally surprised to find that he was indeed standing. He was not surprised whatsoever that there were no demogorgai, living or dead, to be seen. Tufts of smoke rose here and there, thin and wispish, meandering upward from the mulch, from lobed leaves, from the grooves of black boles. Bronze-coloured ashes fluttered throughout the glade, big brittle flakes glowing red-gold at their edges. The air smelled strangely of both honey and sulphur, like burned sugar. But despite the smoke and ash and the sweetened stench of brimstone, nothing seemed to be aflame.

  Save the eyes of the man before him.

  Arrayed in Erelian blue and bronze, a single soldier of the North March Mounted Reserve stood between the pair of massive oaks. He was short in stature, neither broad nor slim across the shoulders, and other than the elaborately sheathed daishō at his hips and the lavish kabuto helm upon his head, the man was unremarkable.

  With the exception of those fiery eyes.

  Golden flame glowed within the soldier’s eye sockets, a soft molten burning that cast the small round face in burnished brass. There was something ancient, potent, distinctly inhuman in those shining orbs. But there was nothing ill there, neither malice nor hint of evil, and their very unnaturalness seemed itself so very natural.

  The Erelian soldier extended Harlastian’s sword and spear.

  “You will want these back now, yes?” The man’s voice held an odd staccato inflection. “I have cleaned and stropped them for you. You will find the edges quite sharp. But you will not need them now, Watchcaptain. No, no. Your work here is done, you see. Done, and done well, yes?”

  Mutely, mechanically, Harlastian reclaimed his weapons.

  “Oh, and these, yes?” A gleaming dagger rested upon each of the soldier’s upturned palms. “I managed to remove some nasty notches. I am somewhat fastidious with blades, you see. An old habit, one of many, each more annoying than the next. Please forgive me should I have…overstepped…in this small gesture, yes?”

  Harlastian reached, retrieved the daggers, slid them into their sheaths. Then, as he remembered tentacles ripping, tusks and talons tearing, he raised his hands to his face.

  “You are very much alive, good Watchcaptain. Alive and restored, yes? I have some small skill in the arts of healing, you see, and you possess quite the considerable constitution. The matter was simple, really, simpler than simple, mundane actually, routine, quite boring now that I consider it, more than tedious, especially unworthy of any sense of wonder. Certainly nothing to be spoken of, yes?”

  Harlastian lowered his hands. Words balled like a fist in his throat. But with some effort he managed:

  “You are – ”

  “Not here,” quipped the soldier with a dismissive wave of one hand. A wide white smile that bespoke both humour and kindness, but also peril, slipped through the glossy sheen shed by those glistering golden eyes. “No, I am not here at all. And neither are my friends, yes?”

  Harlastian nodded despite the fierceness of the frown darkening his face.

  “Good, good, very good,” grinned the little man. “You will rejoin your esteemed Eye now, yes?”

  Harlastian hesitated. He could hear the demons moving among the trees again, gathering, regrouping, the clamour of their clacking and barking escalating in volume and venom with each passing heartbeat. His hand found the pommel of his sword.

  A pearlescent smile.

  “You are a most noble and valiant soul, Watchcaptain, and I am enriched for having met you. But you have done your part, you see, and now my friends and I must do ours. No, no, I do not risk detection, never that. These trees, they are ancient, and a modicum of power yet resides within their rings – they are sure to shield my secret, even as you so kindly shed it from your memory. You will go now, yes? A leisurely stroll back to your mount. Should you be so inclined, stop and smell the moss. Delightful mosses here, you see. We will follow soon enough. Go, yes, go in peace, Watchcaptain. We will take it from here.”

  A black scowl of indecision.

  Golden eyes and a white grin.

  And then Harlastian inclined his head.

  The little man stepped lightly aside, bowing low as the Watchcaptain strode past. He then straightened, smiled briefly at the Fian’s back, and turned his fiery regard toward the terror in the trees.

  And in motions far too smooth for sound, the man called Teji Nashi eased his katana and wakizashi from their scabbards.

  Harlastian walked as one in a dream. His hands reflexively roamed his body, seeking wounds that were no longer there – that may have never been there, for his reality had altered, and he could not be certain of anything that had happened upon Caramel Dark that night. The oak groves themselves had changed, had transformed, were become a place of mist and magic and murmuring mistletoe. A wonderland, a fanciful fantasia, wherein abided the wondrous and fantastic.

  A grotesque golem of stone, huge and hulking, lumbered past the wide-eyed Watchcaptain, the elemental enormity rasping colourful obscenities in an accent exclusive to Scarshire. To the left, a seemingly sentient whirlwind of bronze and blue danced wildly among the trees, its racing whorls sporadically assuming the shape of a man’s face, the features fluctuating and vague save the steady stare of two piercingly pink eyes. Nearby, an equally extraordinary figure flowed over the forest floor – half man, half river, essentially a cataract of rushing water from the waist down, the torso distinctly human and armoured in bronze, its cloak a cascade of wet and wool at its back. To the right trod a gigantic barbarian clad in Erelian battledress, relatively unremarkable but for the blazing fists and face of cerulean fire.

  And somewhere in the distance, obscured by both dark and bark, something incredibly massive, monstrous, plated in great gleaming golden scales, manoeuvered with reptilian alacrity among the towering trees.

  Or perhaps the figures in the forest were in no way marvellous whatsoever. Neither wondrous nor fantastic. But were only hobgoblins spawned of a head wound, the dream-things of a damaged brain, mere figments of an impaired imagination.

  Figments that faded from sight and were fast forgotten.

  Like they had never existed at all.

  The Commander glared at the black façade of the forest. Nothing stirred there. No windborn rustle of leaves, no whir of insect, no nightsong of bird. Not a single sound of mortal struggle. Neither the bitter barking of demons killing nor the ear-shredding shrieks of demons being killed. Nor even the exultant shout of a Deathward warrior dying well. All sound seemed to have been sucked from the oaks, sucked and swallowed down the dumbing gullet of night.

  The silence was like crushed glass in the Erelian’s ears.

  He shivered, closed his eyes.

  And almost immediately, Bronnus’ bewildered bellow:

  “Harlastian!”

  Axennus’ eyes flashed open.

  A solitary mirarran, as silver as a shard of moonlight, trotted toward the formation of North March Mounted Reserve and Fiannar. Tall and grey was the rider, and long blond hair flew at his back like the blazing breath of dragon-fire. As he approached he thrust his spear to the starless sky, and a light like victory rippled along its shaft.

  “This…this cannot be,” came a soft feminine voice.

  Valerre reappeared at the Commander’s shoulder. Her mouth was open in astonishment, disbelief, and in her gaze raged a battle between brightest joy and dark suspicion. But she soon realized that Harlastian was no apparition, and there was no shadow over him, and in his soul dwelt no Darkness. The gigantic Watchtenant shouted, pounded her rillagh and pumped her huge fist into the cold northern air.

  “Harlastian! Hail! Hail Harlastian!”

  And then, beneath the gruesome gore of battle, blood fled Valerre�
��s face. The Fiann’s hard grey eyes widened, and her mouth clapped closed. A rumble of both anger and horror shook her thick bosom.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of screeching squids exploded from the eaves of the oakwood. Some raced on all four limbs, some ran upright, others just seemed to tumble and roll. The fiendish horde tore after the Watchcaptain with a collective mindless madness, reeling and raving, crests flattened against their crowns, tentacles flopping and flapping and slapping behind their heads like dead eels. They charged at the back of the solitary Fian, a careening demonic stampede.

  However, it was not the hot lash of rage that drove them. No, not rage. And neither hate nor hunger.

  But the icy whip of terror.

  “The squids…” began Bronnus.

  Added Axennus, “…they are…”

  “…afraid!” finished the Fiann.

  And then Harlastian of the Grey Watch drew up before them. His face was haggard but oddly free of the filth of war. No blood sullied his spearhead. His raiment was improbably intact and unsoiled, a clean and gleaming grey. And his eyes were sparkling stars.

  “Time enough, Southman?”

  The March Fox smiled like a happy child.

  “Time enough, Watchcaptain.”

  His coal-black charger steps ashore. The animal flicks its tail. The man’s little finger twitches. He moves silently before the formation of his brave four thousand, assuming the centre position of his elite Own. He stares westward. He can no longer see the fires of the foe. He can no longer distinguish the cuesta of Carn a Mil Darach. Not with his eyes.

  Nevertheless, he knows that strange things happen upon the hogback this night. Strange and wonderful things. Things most unanticipated and astonishing.

  But then, the Southman is an astonishing man.

  Hiridion would surely have wept tears of pride.

  Within five strides and five thuds of blood in their breasts, the horses of the North March Mounted Reserve were at maximum gallop across the pale cold limestone of the plateau. The rock trembled with the thunder of their going as the three elongated blurs of blue and bronze bore down upon the hurtling horde of demogorgai. Above each rushing column, the White Eagle of the Republic flew like a great silver snow owl hunting in the night. And at their backs and in their tracks, the warders of Harlastian’s Eye of the Watch were but silent spectres speeding over the stone.

  As the March Fox’s centre column sailed straight at the mass of demons, the Iron Captain’s left and Hastiliarius’ right columns swung wide, directing their attacks at hard angles toward the core.

  The Commander struck first.

  Axennus’ column of riders punched through the middle of the massed squids like a god’s lance. As the fiends forgot their terror and began to fight, they found that they were then assailed from both left and right. Then right and left. Small gaps opened between the riders of the Commander’s column, through which horsemen of the Captain’s and the Right Tenant’s units leapt and lunged. Crazed demogorgai spun to assault passing enemy backs only to find the steel fury of other bronze-breasted two-feets-on-four-feets in their tusked faces. Tentacles flailing, flogging the air, the frustrated fiends spewed black acid at their assailants, but in their confusion and close quarters they only succeeded in burning and blinding one another.

  Demons screamed. The Reserve roared.

  Twisting and twirling, coiling back and forth, the left and the right columns spiraling about the centre, ceaselessly circumvolving, the whole drilling into and through the massed demons as an irresistible chitin-boring machine. A rotary mechanism of irrefutable death. And the squids were but meat through a thresher, grinded to shreds.

  Hiridion’s Helix perfected.

  And by but one hundred men.

  The demogorgai scattered. Those that turned eastward were hunted and hewn to pieces by the hard-riding Helix. Those that fled to the south were slaughtered by vengeful revenants in the night. To the north the fiends would not go, would not return, not to those haunted woods, not ever, not for any reason. And those that went west died upon the whirling steel of five hundred kill-crazed berserkers.

  The Mad Earl of Invarnoth and the Unchained Celebrant of the Cult of Thyr led their wild-eyed warriors into battle with breast-bursting bellows and crackling chain lightning. Frothing at their mouths, the Sons of Noth fought with such bestial fury that many screeching squids flung themselves upon the dolostone to be slain the more swiftly beneath those crazed blue eyes and broad cruel blades. And all the while shrieking:

  M’ogoor’a! M’ogoor’a!

  Demons! Demons!

  They were not wrong.

  The March Fox left his second spear embedded in the back of a squawking squid even as his long sword severed the head from another. He urged his gallant grey mare along the leading curve of the Helix, curling back and away again from the treeline, plunging headlong once more into a howling mass of doomed demogorgai. And as he did so, a thing plucked at the edge of his sight like a fingernail at a lyre-string, a thing that was less than a glance yet greater than a glimpse, a fleeting and fragile impression broken by a blink: Five riders inexplicably galloping from the oaks, bodies bent low over their mounts, racing to join the Reserve.

  Five soldiers of the Ghost Brigade.

  Two demons leapt at the Commander, only to be impaled upon the lethal points of the Iron Captain’s and the Right Tenant’s crisscrossing spears. A third squid sprang at Axennus from the side. The Commander’s sword slashed down, delivering death, then instantly rose to slice at another flying fiend. And in the mayhem of the moment the phantom fivesome were for a time forgotten.

  The soul of Ingvar Dragonsbane soared. Or roared. Or raged. No matter. However the Nothiric spirit might rejoice in battle and blood and slaughter, the Mad Earl’s soul absolutely exalted. The blades of his battleaxe were like argent wings of death swooping down upon the frantic foe, fatal and final. About him, his berserkers fought like Stone Lords gone insane, brutal, bestial, with neither care nor concern for their own well-being and, of course, categorically less for that of the foe.

  Tilbeder’s chains flashed outward, crashing and exploding amid grouped demogorgai, shards of lightning blasting the fiends apart, scattering scorched heads and limbs and torsos about like so many hapless sparks of death. And all the while the Unchained Celebrant shrilled with laughter, his eyes wild and wet with ecstasy, his ancient face the very mask of mind-broken madness.

  M’ogoor’a, verily.

  The massacre was thorough and absolute – though it was later recorded that a single demogorg escaped the annihilation, tumbling tusks over tentacles from the heights of Caramel Dark, only to land at the ironshod feet of a particularly unamused Warder of the Wandering Guard. This was never confirmed, however, as the Daradur were a folk most reticent, and the squid in question has never talked.

  Waif fumed atop the wide shoulders of Arn’badt’s animated corpse. Her cherubic cheeks took a deep dark red. She bit her lower lip so hard that blood trickled down her dimpled chin. Something snapped within the burned thing as she crushed it to her chest.

  Impossible! That did not just happen!

  What, sister? intruded Urchin’s unwanted, annoying, whiny little voice. What, tell me, tell me, what, what?

  The little girl snarled.

  Nothing, brother, she snapped, chewing her lip to a pulp. Streams of smoke eked from her ears. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Attend your own now.

  But you said –

  Leave me!

  And Urchin left. But Waif was certain that she heard a silent snicker in the hollow of his departure. Her eyes burned. She sputtered a blood-spattering series of obscenities that had been ancient long before the first man ever cursed.

  The little girl turned away from the catastrophe of Caramel Dark. The disembowelled, decapitated, very dead King of the Giants tramped tempestuously back across the prairie. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Pickets and sentries gave the gruesome pair a wide berth. Those among the Blood King’s host tha
t were awake fled from the rumour of their coming; those that still slept tossed fitfully, fraught with the foulest of nightmares.

  As Waif approached the pair of half-Urk’s that warded her tent, she hissed –

  “You two, with me.”

  The yellow-hided fiends shared a single beady-eyed glance of uttermost terror.

  “You will both be dead by morning,” the little girl promised as she passed between them. “But you will die happy.”

  6

  THE HARBINGER

  “This existence is a labyrinth

  And here even the Fates become lost,

  Luck and Fortune and Providence wander cobwebbed halls

  Bemoaning their wretched lots and squandered inheritances

  As uncounted destinies converge

  Upon a single doom.”

  Attributed to Shu Ultan Sarcerin

  in Death and the Necromancer by Idi bi Bullah

  “Are we lost?”

  Dandar stared at the stone beside his bent knee. He cocked his head to one side, squinted his coal black eyes. Then he pressed his palm upon cold floor once more, shifting the placement of his hand slightly from where it had been during the initial effort – as though the variance of an inch in the vast mantle of the earth would make a difference. But then, optimism was ever the curse of that capable urthron of the kanga Kulgum.

  “We are Daradur, kulg-Kor,” Dandar muttered as he concentrated on his task under hand – quite literally. Power surged through his forearm and fingers again, streaking into the subterranean stone. “We are never lost.”

  Axe Captain Jadun stood above the kneeling priest, muscled arms folded across his dented breastplate, glaring down from under a flaring frown.