by Sean Rodden
The render’s roar instantly transitioned into an ear-splitting shriek. A powerful foreleg spun away into the misty morass, severed at the knee. Something smashed into the rider’s left ankle, shattering the bones as though they had been fashioned of the most fragile glass. Blood burst from the steed’s belly like red wine from a ripped waterskin. Pain bloomed between its hind legs, tearing and flaring.
The mar render crashed headfirst to the stone, its lower jaw snapping as it caught a crag, twisting its neck, turning its body to the right side, trapping its rider beneath its flank as it slid across hard ground greased with its own blood. Momentum carried the creature well beyond the front line of the enemy formation, into the heart of the Daradun war machine. Pinned beneath his dying mount, the ’Spawn warrior could only scream through blood and pain at the huge hammer coming down on his head.
Dulgar rose from his knees. He was drenched in the blood of the beast, his naked torso painted red with his triumph. One hand gripped the haft of his war-axe, the other clenched the render’s genitalia, ripped and dripping, holding the gruesome trophy high above his head. The Wild One laughed aloud and flung his prize at the feet of the Talon. His solitary eye burned like a black hole torn in the stuff of a grinning red universe.
“Next?”
Sil kin Hesh hissed and withdrew behind the two other ’Spawn warriors.
The Screamer remained aloof and off to one side, her white eyes calm and unperturbed, the exquisite beauty of her face blemished by neither wrath nor worry.
A single shouted order, and the entire army moved to engage the defenders of Doomfall.
“Disssmount and dessstroy him!”
As the two forces finally clashed in a thunderous crash of iron on steel, the pair of ’Spawn alighted and attacked Dulgar from either side. The Darad deflected the first blow with the flat of his war-axe, took the second upon his left vambrace, then spun and crashed his fist into the side of one warrior’s right knee. Sun-dried driftwood could not have snapped so easily. As the first warrior crumpled, Dulgar dashed aside from one descending blade to intercept another upon his metal-sheathed right forearm, then reeled about and swung his weapon with blinding speed and full two-handed force into the armoured abdomen of the second ’Spawn. The Daradun steel sliced right through the giant – plate, chain, flesh and bone. Blood and bile and viscera spewed. The impetus of the blow took the Wild One past the collapsing warrior, the whirl of his war-axe wheeling back upon both Bloodspawn, decapitating the duo with a single sweep of that screeching scarlet steel.
Sil kin Hesh bolted before the severed heads struck the stone.
Aida dan Char watched him go, her pearly gaze detached and dispassionate. The traitor raced southward and away, skirting the frenzied chaos of battle, the riderless renders clearing a path for his own through the ranks of Unmen and Urkroks. A long knife of peculiar blue steel materialized in the Screamer’s slim hand. Nonchalantly, she looked back upon the battle-crazed, blood-smeared, one-eyed Stone Lord.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare, bitch,” snarled the Wild One in passable Eastish. He jerked his dripping war-axe in the direction of Sil kin Hesh’s shrinking form. “I don’t give a fuck what you got against that fuckin’ ass-sucking mudfucker – he’s fuckin’ mine.”
The Screamer hesitated, raised one fine eyebrow, considering. She then nodded, and there was a thing akin to appreciation, even to gratitude, in that brief, nearly imperceptible movement. The steel in her palm disappeared. Silently abandoning her concern, the assassin calmly drew her render away.
At her back, the Wild One howled like a lunatic.
And the chase was on.
“The Screamer has defied you, Prince Kor.”
The Halflord watched Sil kin Hesh’s headlong flight through the serried mass of the Blood King’s army. The traitor bowled through squares of Unmen, plunged past wedges of Urkroks – pursued, so it seemed, by a roaring ball of red fire, irresistible, relentless, bereft of any inkling of ruth. And the fireball was gaining, swiftly and surely.
“No, Gren del Mor.” The Prince spread his corded arms, stretching the massive muscles of his chest. “Aida dan Char’s work is done.”
Her own arms folded across her bosom, Ev lin Dar said nothing, but only followed the furious hunt with wide white eyes.
“The Screamer was to ensure that the treacher did not survive the battle with the trolls,” persisted Gren del Mor. “And Sil kin Hesh yet lives.”
“Does he?”
Gren del Mor scowled, the scales of his lacertilian tattoo clustering closely upon his thin face. But he did not answer the Halflord’s quiet query, for he comprehended that it was not, in sooth, a question at all.
“The Screamer has done the Bloodspawn a true boon,” Kor ben Dor declared. There was an air of wonderment, of awe to his tone. “She has spared us the sin of kinslaughter. She has purged us of all possible guilt, kept our consciences clean and clear – and returned to us our soul whole and unsullied.”
Gren del Mor gasped aloud as the crimson comet absolutely exploded into the back of the fleeing traitor.
Ev lin Dar looked away.
And by us, Shields, the Prince did not say as he watched, I mean me.
The mar-render reared, viciously clawing the leaden air, froth and spittle spraying from its cavernous maw. Dulgar and Sil kin Hesh crashed to the ground, the stone shaking, shuddering with the impact. The raging Darad rolled away as two slim fang-like swords came down and struck the rock where he had been, showering sparks. The Wild One’s war-axe whirled to shatter both blades, but the ’Spawn’s swords vanished mid-swing, and Dulgar scarcely avoided a lightning-fast counterthrust that sought his good eye.
The Stone Lord rose, his feet braced solidly beneath him, his beard parted in a garish blood-sopped grin. A worthy foe, this one – smarter than the others, swifter and stronger, deadlier. He had marked the giant for a coward, but even the most craven foe might turn and fight when forced to do so. And, rather surprisingly, many cowards could fight well. Some of them, very well.
Dulgar gestured to the black serpents bobbing atop the giant’s head.
“Love what you’ve done with your fuckin’ hair.”
Sil kin Hesh hissed, backed away, pronged tongue flicking. He found himself and his savage opponent within a living henge of stone – the three renders had absconded, and a host of towering Graniants had closed the breach behind the beasts, pressing tight and close, entirely encircling the pair of combatants. The ’Spawn’s long blue blades danced in the dull sheen of morning, curved colubrine fangs assailing air. Round white eyes glowed with the determination to live, to survive. The natural instinct for fight or flight. He would fight. Not for an upwelling surge of deep-rooted fortitude, not for a long-slumbering intrinsic intrepidness. No, the decision to stand and fight had not been his own, but had been made for him. By friend and foe alike. Now he must –
The Darad attacked.
Blood-scarlet steel flashed furiously, seeming to slice simultaneously from both left and right, then before and behind. Speed lacking any semblance of grace, strength without blemish of beauty. Violence divested of all mercy, of all compassion. Ferocity, brutality, cruelty, and nothing to restrain or weaken one and all. Nothing to right the… imbalance. Simple steel and sinew and the desire to destroy.
To kill.
Sil kin Hesh blocked left, dodged right, both long blades a blue flurry of frantic resistance. He seemed to ever be defending, stepping back and aside, deflecting, diverting. But then he saw an opening as the foe’s war-axe whorled wildly by his right thigh, and he struck, one, two, three impossibly swift thrusts of those thin blades, spitting acid between his fangs as he attacked. The Darad caught the first blow on his sheathed forearm, the second upon the haft of his axe, but the third sank into his left shoulder, into the joint just beneath the clavicle, even as the caustic spray splashed into his solitary eye.
Sil kin Hesh attacked again, a coiled cobra striking from the grass, blindingly fast.
The Stone Lord roared, flexed, twisted away from the assault, the movement trapping and snapping the narrow blade like a twig. He immediately countered, his axe cleaving upward, severing the ’Spawn’s arm at the elbow. Despite the damage to his shoulder, Dulgar’s left fist crashed into the giant’s groin as long knives of inrinil sprang from mechanisms embedded in his vambrace – he twisted his thick wrist, ripping upward, opening his opponent’s abdomen from pelvis to sternum, innards spilling outward. Incredibly, Sil kin Hesh managed one final strike, fang-blade streaking downward toward the Darad’s exposed back. But the broad blades of the Stone Lord’s war-axe stayed the assault, then twirled in the air and plunged down, chopping cleanly through the giant’s armoured ankle.
The ’Spawn toppled like a felled tree.
Round white eyes stared up into a sad and sunless sky. Breath came in slow, rattling, wet gasps, hissing away into the darkening day. Sil kin Hesh sensed a presence at the edge of his shrinking sentience. And shame came to him.
I failed you, my Prinsss. Worssse, betrayed you. But know at my death that I am yoursss once more.
And then a broad steel-shod boot briefly came between his sight and the sky, followed by the sharp crunch of cranial plates and the sickening squelch of spattered brain matter, and Sil kin Hesh saw and heard no more. No more, that is, save these few words only:
I am not your Prince, fool. But yes, yes, yes. You are mine now, mine, all mine, mine, mine!
Dulgar’s claws snicked as they retracted back into his vambrace. The blood-drenched Darad wiped at his eye with thick begrimed fingers. Acerbic smoke sifted from the surface of that lone onyx orb as the Maiden Earth within him burned the acid away. The Wild One reached across and grasped the broken blade of the ’Spawn’s sword, pulling the thin length of steel from his shoulder and tossing it disdainfully aside. The Maiden compelled milky venom from the wound before sealing the skin and mending the muscle beneath.
Dulgar growled. Acid. A prick in the shoulder. Poison. None of it had hurt him, done any real harm. But it had certainly pissed him off.
Fuckin’ snake-faced mudfucker deserved worse than he fuckin’ got.
And then the garun-tar registered that he was not alone – that he was yet, in fact, completely surrounded by dozens, scores, even hundreds of grumbling Graniants, an entire army of angry stone giants armed and armoured for war.
From grumble to rumble, from rumble to roar.
And a single spat curse –
“Ahhh, fuck me!”
The battle raged across the mistbound maw of Doomfall, fulminating in all its unleashed fury beneath a dead leaden firmament, rocking and railing at the foot of the incline cloven between the sheer terminus of the Westwall and the soaring stone of the Dragon’s Head. Swords sheared, axes cleaved, hammers fell. Shields were splintered, armour was battered, bodies were broken. Pools of blood welled from the mounds of the dead that rose between the two forces, greasing the rock red and black. The fog burned. The ash in the air was painted pink. Death screamed over and over, but no ears heard, no heart heeded – the repetitive refrain was simply a monotonous sound of no specific origin, no more meaningful than crickets chirping in the night. At some points along the front, the slaughter was appallingly savage; at others, the carnage was more gradual and methodical, almost sluggish. But everywhere, death and dying, with only the wait differentiating one from the other.
A brief reprieve came when the heaps of the slain became too substantial to surmount, rearing walls of flesh and iron over which neither force could fight, kill or die effectively. And so the thralls of the Blood King collected their fallen, tearing down the morbid divide, ripping the rampart apart corpse by corpse, carcass after carcass – while the Daradur relaxed in their odd formless formation, wiping their weapons, comparing injuries, and chatting idly amongst themselves.
Then the assault began in earnest once more. More mountains rose, more barriers were built as hundreds upon hundreds of Unmen, Urkroks and half-Urks were viciously and systematically massacred. Infrequently, a Stone Lord would amass wounds too numerous or too horrific to withstand, and he would stumble, fall, and be set upon and slain, and the hordes of Shadow would howl with gleeful hope. But another mara Warator would surge forward, and that fledgling hope swiftly plunged into a terrifying despair of deadly axe-blades and hammer-heads. And the walls of death rose higher and higher until the time came to tear them down again.
No one wins in war. There is no glory. There is no splendour, no grandeur. Only victory and loss, triumph and defeat. Conquest and submission, subjugation – or eradication. The result never varies, only the minutiae diverge. One group gains, the other loses, but all suffer. Affirmative and adverse forces in constant conflict, the madness multiplying with each martially justified murder – positive versus negative, the product of which is and ever will be the latter. Good men driven to kill, bad men delighting in death. And words such as ‘virtuous’ and ‘moral’, ‘noble’ and ‘worthy’ bandied about like so many shiny trinkets tossed from a tinker’s wagon. Pray, tell the weeping wives and mothers how the brass plaque on the monument of marble differs from the severed head on a pike. Shout the rightness of it all to your vast herds of bleating sheep. And all the while, as the winds of war howl across the world, the soul is the thing that suffers most, bleeding, leaking, slowly dying. The soul of a man, the soul of Mankind. Nothing distinguishes the two. Death is death, everlasting, and there is no returning.
O mighty mongers of war, where is the triumph and the glory in that?
“I cannot say,” sighed Kor ben Dor, steam streaming about his words. His callused palm stroked the coarse hair at his render’s neck as he watched the battle rage before him. “Ask how and why often enough, Shield, and eventually there is no answer – or should there be an answer, no one knows it.”
“But I did not ask how or why, Prince Kor.” Gren del Mor frowned, genuinely perplexed. “I asked when and where the Bloodspawn will strike.”
“And I answered you.”
The Black Shield blinked. “You did?”
The Halflord breathed forth more mist, said nothing.
Ev lin Dar smiled to herself, within herself mostly, but the corners of her lips twitched. Sometimes, she knew, ‘I cannot say’ actually spoke volumes.
“Patience, Gren. Your thirst will be quenched soon enough.” She then raised one arm, pointing. “The Wild One still stands.”
The Halflord looked southward, and he seemed to start slightly, his grave features becoming graver still. The rivers of vapour from his nostrils suddenly ceased.
Gren del Mor whistled lowly.
“Amazing. Left unchecked, that lone little troll might destroy the entire southern section of Graniants from under Earthfall.” The Shield’s eyes narrowed, squinting. “Isn’t that the witchdoctor’s troop, Prince Kor?”
But the Prince of the Bloodspawn was already moving.
Umbar’hal was no warrior. He wore no armour, bore no shield, wielded no weapon. The notch-edged knife at his waist was purely ceremonial. Even the meekest and weakest Graniants could fight – the world beneath Earthfall was a hazardous, unforgiving place, and demanded great mental and physical endurance of its gigantic denizens – but he had never enjoyed fighting, had never taken pleasure in hurting others, even when such violence was absolutely necessary. The fall of Arn’badt the tyrant had brought him a sense of relief, of justice, but no joy. He had not mourned the King of the Giants, and he did not miss him, but no loss of life truly pleased him. He had, in fact, never killed. As a child, he had absorbed punches and taken beatings from other adolescent Graniants, resisting only enough to ensure his survival and avoid any serious injury. He had never used his substantial arcane gifts to harm his assailants – repel them, yes, but not hurt them. Umbar’hal had believed, and still believed, that true strength was found in suffering. And he had suffered much, very much.
And more was coming.
The solitary Dar
ad was unstoppable. As small as he was in stature, he was too swift, too strong, too crazed. Surrounded by stone giants, he had erupted like a volcano of the primal earth releasing a rage too long pent, too long restrained. His great double-bladed axe thrashed through stone armour and living bone with equal ease; unbreakable claws tore tendons, gored groins, dismembered, disemboweled. Thrown mallets and maces merely glanced off him as though they were forged of stuff lighter than dust. Graniants with adequate courage or fear to engage him were brutally, gorily, sadistically slain. Savaged and ravaged. This fire-maned Darad enjoyed killing, thrived in the delivery of cruel death, gloried in it, exalted in it.
He was everything that Umbar’hal was not.
And he was coming.
Umbar’hal had not always been the shaman of shamans. He had inherited the role from another, from the one who had guided him, had taught him, had loved him. Unconditionally and without reserve. She had been a gentle soul, his beloved Shar’eth. Too gentle, perhaps, for the harsh exacting world under Earthfall. When the Blood Mages had come for her, he had not been there, and she had not resisted. They had taken her, not for her intellect, not for her droll sense of humour, not even for the sweet fleshy pleasures of her sensuous body. No, they had come for her power. And that, yes, that they took. And took their time in the taking. And her beautiful life with it.
The stooped witchdoctor watched as the last two warriors between himself and the demented Darad disappeared – one ruthlessly butchered upon the cold rough rock, the other thinking better of the battle and in outright flight. Umbar’hal nodded to himself, the skull fetishes in his greased green hair rattling quietly in agreement. War is about release, Umbar’hal. The time had come. He would not resist. He could not resist, even had he the compunction to do so. The desiccated dragon’s heart at his bony bosom remained dead and drained; even had he been able to call them forth, his innate eldritch powers would have been of no advantage against this foe in that dread place of fog and stone so proximate to Doomfall; and he was certainly no physical match for the wrath and might of the lone Stone Lord. No, he would not even try. The shaman of shamans bowed his head in one last clattering chorus of chiming skulls .
