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

by Sean Rodden

  “Varonin evidently concurs. He insists that the Stone Lords raised but six mounds of enemy dead, and fewer than one thousand corpses compose each mound. The Blood Mage counters that casualties are not necessarily limited to the slain, but may include the wounded and the captured as well.”

  “The Deathward do not fight to wound. Nor did we take prisoners. There cannot be – ”

  “Teller of the Tale!” The Fiann’s exclamation was as a hiss, soft yet shrill. Her fingers knotted in the mercurial mane of her steed. “The creature means to surrender five thousand combatants to us. Those ragged lines of the weaponless and unarmoured, they who fought upon this field yestereve and fled in defeat and disgrace. They submit, the wounded and the weary, they yield to us – Unman, Urkrok and Wulfing alike. Fully fifty hundred souls throw themselves upon the spears of our… mercy.”

  The Lord of the Fiannar glared in silence. The calm carved of his countenance belied the roil of emotional turmoil within him.

  “The Marshal delivers your terms, my Lord...”

  The shriek of laughter that followed was the sound of a dull blade sawing through living flesh. The morning shivered. The air crackled with mirth and madness.

  “…and there is your answer.”

  The Blood Mage turned from the emissaries of the Deathward, its cloak and robe flapping flamboyantly, luridly, and the dead thing glided unhurriedly away. Long scarlet silks licked the blood from the battle-stained ground in the thing’s wake, lascivious tongues lapping the festering flesh of the world.

  And when those tongues had at long last withdrawn into the ranks of the enemy, a second figure was revealed. An Unmannish woman. Or that which remained of one. Curled upon the cruel earth like a lonesome cur dying in the cold.

  She had been beautiful. Once. This broken thing, this lost and stricken soul. Before globs of gummy blood clotted closed a dozen wounds; before the miasma of blue-black bruises painted a fresco of pain on her skin; before the bones of her body were bent at impossibly bizarre angles. Verily, before her breaking she had been exceptionally beautiful. And perhaps, of a time, she had been happy, had loved and known love, had found peace in the simplistic glory of a sunset on the Peacekeepers. But now, huddled and cowering upon those soiled grasses, she was reduced to the saddest and most wretched of creatures.

  The woman’s battered face swiveled toward the Marshal. Her mouth agape, her small dark eyes weeping tears of blood and pus, she reached out with one ruined hand, begging, pleading in silence for something, something pure and profound, something she believed with the fervency of a fanatic that only the Fiannar might provide.

  Salvation.

  Even at that distance, and despite the minuteness of the motion, Alvarion saw the Marshal of the Grey Watch shake his head.

  The Lord’s heart ached within him, a real and poignant pain that writhed in his bosom like a nest of serpents set afire.

  What have you done, Leech?

  Varonin and the standard-bearers put their backs to the woeful woman and her anguished appeal, and they rode in screaming silence back toward their waiting Lord.

  The vast mass of the Blood King’s army also turned about, marching swiftly and with purpose against their own beaten track eastward and away across the Plains.

  Leaving five thousand forlorn and sorry souls behind.

  Do not do this, demon. Do not do this!

  But alas, it was already done.

  “This…this I cannot, will not abide,” the Lord of the Fiannar swore as he watched the return of the parley party. The riders’ progress seemed oddly delayed, slowed, and an odd opaqueness obscured them, making their forms imprecise and vague. A moment passed before Alvarion apprehended that he was seeing through a veil of unshed tears.

  “What choice have you, nephew?”

  Alvarion bit down on a reflexive retort that he knew he would surely come to regret sooner rather than later – and likely immediately. He willed his eyes dry.

  The Marshal and the pair of bannermen reined in before their Lord and leader. Their own eyes were glistening with more than the crisp wind of their ride.

  Varonin fisted his chest.

  “Lord Alvarion, the enemy refuses your terms. They counter with the proffer of five thousand prisoners. There will be no further negotiation.”

  “We can accept no prisoners,” Taresse stated stiffly. “The Deathward have not the means necessary to accommodate them. We imprison no creature, however foul of nature. They must be sent away.”

  “They will not go,” replied Varonin. “Whether they are compelled to stay or are simply too terrified to leave is unclear. They remain and sue for clemency. But that mercy we cannot afford them, for we must not allow them behind our lines, whether they be armed or no. The risk is far too dire.”

  “We have no recourse, then, but to slay them where they stand,” declared the Fiann. “Fouler deeds have been perpetrated in war, certainly. Our conscience can remain clear. We did not choose this – it was chosen for us. There is no other option.”

  In the distance, the hapless figure of the woman began to crawl forward, each increment of ground she gained an excruciating exercise in passion and pain. The host of the beaten and the broken lurched into motion behind her.

  “They come,” observed Taresse.

  They come, Alvarion echoed silently. His shoulders sagged. They come, and I have nothing for them, save the red blade of murder.

  “We must act swiftly now, Lord,” the Marshal insisted as he slid his bare blade from its loop at his belt, “lest our command and control be compromised. Already the Nothirings grow restless for revenge against the Wulfings in ranks of the enemy. And I need not inform you of the mood of the Host of Arrenhoth.”

  Taresse placed her hand upon Alvarion’s arm once more, this time an imploring one.

  “The Marshal of the Watch speaks truth and wisdom, my Lord. We must act. Ruthlessly and decisively. And do so immediately.”

  The ruined Unmannish woman crept, crawled, clawed inexorably onward, her abject army shambling at her back.

  Nothing but murder.

  Alvarion’s eyes flashed furiously beneath the bright brow of the Helm of Defurien. His visage became severe, his manner forbidding. He squared his solid shoulders, gripped the reins of his mount in fists of steel, exhaled an icy spiral of argentine air.

  “I intend to.”

  And the Lord’s mirarran surged forth, at a gallop on the second stride.

  The fog is his friend.

  Ground-clinging cloud, formed on the surface of the River Ruil, glides over the frosted grass like a rolling wall of white night, thick and viscous. The half-warmth of dawn feeds it, nourishes it, serving to strengthen the swell. He feels some satisfaction as he rides through the fog, some sense that all is not entirely unwell with the world. For he does not need to tap too deeply into the well of his own power in order to conceal his going. He does not have to hide his ride. The cold earth, the damp air, the grey aurora of approaching day combine to do this for him.

  Yes, the fog is his friend.

  The formidable figure wills his great black charger to slow its stride. One hundred knights in pale armour do likewise. Their pearl-white steeds match his own mount’s gait. No commands are given. Nothing needs to be said, no orders are necessary. The knights of the Own intuit their Prince’s instructions instinctively. And like their Prince, they know they are near now. So very near.

  The horses settle into a walk, slow and silent. Exhaling, their breath seeds the seething haze; inhaling, the stench of fire floods their lungs. Not fire, precisely, but the horses have no previous experience of this thing, this abomination that reeks of sulphur and blood and scorched earth. They know it not, and would dread it, would fear it past the cusp of terror into panic, were they not bound to the indomitable, unyielding will of the one in black.

  He brings his charger to a halt just within the outer western edge of fog. His nostrils twitch against the burning stink of brimstone and blood. His eyes
shine. The mists do not hinder his sight. He sees. More clearly than any other among the Born. For of all the Born, he alone is also of the Undying.

  Oh yes, he sees.

  And he despises that which he sees.

  His hand curls about the haft of his sword. He watches the unholy fire burn, watches it blaze and rage. Watches and waits. Waits for the fog to fade. So that the undead who fuel the fire might see his blade before they die again.

  The fog persists past all practicality. But he does not mind the delay. He has ever been tolerant of waiting.

  Hatred is far more patient than love.

  Above the distant horizon, the swollen sky slowly transformed from the clammy grey of dead flesh to the pale pall of fresh ash. The unrelenting march of time forced sallow light and wan fog westward across the prairie, a hushed rumble of haze and halflight. The Blood Mage paid the distressed stirrings of day little heed. None, actually. There was no true pain there, no mortal agony. Nothing to relish, nothing to savour. It found beauty and joy in the act of defilement, preferred darkness to light, experienced ecstasy in the evisceration and exsanguination of living beings, in the anguish and agony of tortured souls – and none of those sweet things might be found in the mere mists of morning.

  The Mage floated through the loose lines of the Blood King’s host. Its amber eyes glowed with garish fire, the grin upon its gorgeous face a slashing blade of madness across the bound wrists of mortal dejection. It could sense, feel, taste the torment seeping from the mind of the pitiable little warlord of the enemy. Pitiable? No, the Mage did not know pity, neither ruth nor mercy, but only delight in despair and pleasure in pain. Just one more nudge, a subtle shove of his wounded spirit, and the brittle Fian with the flaming sword would break. Break like that prissy princess of the Grudd Clan had broken. Just as easily, and far more gratifyingly.

  Giddy with the thrill of anticipated triumph, the creature unleashed an ear-shredding shriek as it passed the rearguard of the army and joined the Vein of its fellow Mages. Melding into the middle of that scarlet skein, the thing turned and linked hands with its sinister brethren, completing a chain of malice and spite fully six dozen dead sorcerers strong. The fiend’s power swelled and pulsated, pouring forth to augment that which had already been accumulated by the Vein. The Cauldron was almost full, it knew. Nearly full to the brim with blood and fire.

  The Mage lapped lustfully at imagined morsels of misery prickling its voluptuous lips.

  Behind it, the innocuous fogs of morning crept inexorably closer.

  The Lord of the Fiannar peered down upon the broken woman. He could feel his heart striking his ribcage, again and again, like a bloodied fist pummeling a prison wall, protesting innocence, demanding justice. His eyes threatened tears; his lower lip quivered; his abdomen felt at once heavy and hollow. Inhaling deeply, he released an extended tremulous sigh. Why must compassion be so difficult to disguise? Why was selfless concern for others so impossible to conceal? Anger, hatred, cruelty – all these things might be hidden easily and effectively enough. But empathy was ever a conspicuous cut in the tightly twined tapestry of the human condition.

  Not that such emotional betrayal was overly worrisome the moment – for the poor woman’s eyes were swollen shut and fused fast with dried blood.

  “You must stop,” Alvarion commanded in adequate Eastish.

  But the woman continued crawling, dragging herself forward, less upon hands and knees than upon belly and breasts. Ribbons of gore and guts greased the grass behind her.

  Lord Alvarion dismounted, his heels crunching loudly upon earth frosted dark with frozen blood. He stood directly before the woman, obstructing her path. He watched as her shattered hands feebly fluttered over the hard leather of his boots.

  Slowly, he drew his sword. The sound of the blade sliding from its scabbard was a bitter song of sorrow, a mournful epicedium.

  “You must stop.”

  The ruined woman opened her mouth, her lips cracked and bleeding, her tongue lolling uselessly behind splintered teeth. She gurgled unintelligibly, turning her battered face upward, imploring, beseeching. Pinkish froth formed at the commissures, blue-green fluid dripped down her chin. Two comprehensible words managed to slip through the burble of blood and bile.

  “Kill…us.”

  The Lord of the Deathward raised Findroth the Gifted, and a whoosh of hot thunder reverberated in the chill as the golden steel burst afire.

  The wretched woman was wracked with what might have been rapture.

  But Alvarion’s risen blade did not signify her death – rather it brought to an abrupt skittering halt the party of Grey Watch that had ridden hard and close upon the hooves of his mirarran. A score of spectral warders under the charge of Marshal Varonin fanned out and formed a semi-circle about their Lord, lances leveled, spears set at shoulders, everbare blades gleaming in the gloom.

  Alvarion whispered the fire from his sword. Beneath the skin of his face ten thousand phantom ants chewed and bit and stung his flesh. He sensed the sorcerous strength of the Vein accumulating, consolidating, culminating toward catastrophe. He knew the wicked witchery the Blood Mages invoked. The Cauldron, they called it. The Deathward named it Hellstorm.

  His nostrils ricked with the reek of brimstone and blood.

  Time, he realized, was sorely short.

  “I refuse you.” Alvarion’s voice was brusque, brisk with command, with authority. “You and this graceless host of the lost must come no nearer. For whether you halt here and now, or should you persist and insist upon the insanity of surrender, you will all die this day. This hour, to be precise. Your doom is not in question. The only thing that remains undecided is the manner of your dying.”

  A wheezing, hacking appeal: “Please…kill…us.”

  “No. You will stop. You will await your death here.”

  The woman wrapped her hapless hands about one of Alvarion’s boot, her upturned face pleading, the pathos of her entreaty a screech of nails sliding down slate.

  “Please…kill…us…all.”

  The Lord sheathed his sword. Lowered himself into a crouch. Took the warped remnants of the woman’s hands into his whole and able own. His voice was but a whisper, the soothing susurration of a weary father admonishing a wayward child.

  “You will not draw a Deathward blade across your throat. For should you force Fiannian hands to slay you on this field, you will not only achieve your own doom, but the destruction of those shining souls compelled to kill you. Innocent souls, for the greater part. Souls that need not be burdened with the murders of five thousand helpless enemies coerced to yield to them by an inhuman entity that cares little of death and less of life. You must not die with their guilt and shame mirrored in your eyes. You will not stain your own soul so.”

  “Please…”

  “No.”

  The woman’s mouth worked open and closed, jaw flapping up and down, but no further word did she speak. From somewhere deep within her surfaced the strength to tighten her grasp of Alvarion’s hand. And in that grip was acquiescence. In her silence, acceptance.

  I will stay.

  The Lord of the Fiannar leaned forward and brushed his lips upon the woman’s bruised brow. Mutely did he wish her peace and grace in death. He then banished all traces of physical pain from her broken body. And unto the Teller of the Tale he prayed for the repose of her torn and tattered soul.

  The compass of his kindness had caused him to close his eyes.

  And when he opened them once more he found himself staring into cold gleaming globes of clearest cobalt blue.

  Your bleeding heart will be your bane, you little shit!

  Alvarion recoiled instantly, his hand flashing for Findroth. But before he could draw that golden brand, before the spears of the wary Grey Watch could sail and plunge, a single fire-fletched arrow whirred through the morn and the woman’s right eye, piercing her brain, exploding out the back of her skull. Her hair erupted into wild flame, her mouth stretching in a shrill yet s
ilent scream. And then she crumpled to the earth, coiled and contorted, curled upon those blood-frosted grasses like a fetus in the womb.

  But Waif was gone, and the only creature that died there was Chief Daughter Hundo g’Ulbab of the Grudd Clan.

  The Lord of the Deathward turned, his visage a vision of white wrath.

  “That was unnecessary, Prince Thrannien,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

  The Sun Lord lowered his bow.

  “I…disagree.” The Ath’s shining eyes flicked to the Fian’s hand at the hilt of his sword. “As do you, Lord Alvarion.”

  And the Prince of the Athair swung Arrowwing about, and rider and steed soared away as swiftly and as silently as they had come.

  The Blood Mage shivered with delight as it poured the last of its power into the Cauldron. The air before the Vein shimmered with sorcerous heat, warped and waving, like a wall of boiling water suspended in the chill of autumnal morn. The Mage at each end of the Vein floated toward the other, the chain of its fellow fiends following until they had formed a seamless circle of scarlet silks. Above and before them, the iridescent wall mimicked the motion of the Mages, flattening and fashioning a round plane of rippling power, the bubbling surface of a festering wound in the world. And swiftly did the disc take a deep crimson colour, dark and cold, a blood magic more venous than arterial in nuance and nature.

  The Blood Mage licked its voluptuous lips.

  And the fogs of morning began to fade.

  “Archers.”

  All Fiannar were master bowmen or bowwomen, and all had with them at the Seven Hills their bows and quivers full of long and lethal arrows.

  But these were not the ones for whom Lord Alvarion called.

  Thirty-six archers emerged from the Deathward lines, striding out onto the field before the three grassy rises, uncaped and hood-less, their leathers and light armour worn close and tight. Their rillagha were fulgurant streaks of lightning across hearts of thunder, and in their eyes was a shared storm of argent wrath.