by Sean Rodden
And then Lalindel and his score of Sun Knights alighted on the floor of the basin, long swords aglitter, and Darkness fled from them like night from the dawn.
But for many, for oh so very many, they were far too few.
And far too late.
Cruel khurlur hewed the forelegs from under the splendid steed. The mirarran screamed and crashed chest-first to the ground. Bones snapped and crunched, and the rider was thrown headlong toward the seething throng, her body veering violently through the bloodmist to evade the upward arcs of slicing blades. She landed on her left shoulder, tucking tight, lithely rolling away from a barrage of Dwarkash blows.
Her guard was gone. Dead, or doomed to be so soon. She was alone.
Alone, save the one to whom she was irrevocably swordsworn.
The Shield Maiden came up fighting, speckled eyes ablaze, war braids whipping the morning. Her blade flashed and slashed, its lethal point and edges seeking throats and armpits and exposed joints. She danced around, in between, even upon the furious fiends that assailed her, cutting and carving a blood-slicked swath, pressing ever forward, never ceasing, never pausing in her pursuit of deliverance. And then a hole appeared in the horde, and she saw the crevasse that led out of the canyon, out and away. She dashed toward it, streaking across the steaming stone, striking left and right as she ran.
And all the while, between her buckler and her bosom, Caelle cradled the Lordling of the Fiannar in the crook of her arm.
Behind you, Tee-tee.
Tielle immediate spun around, swinging her sword with all her surprising strength, and the heinous head of a hulking dwar-Durk sailed from its shoulders.
Duck.
The girl squatted low, barely avoiding the vicious sweep of a cleaving khurl. She stabbed upward with her dirric, the slim blade slipping between plates in a Dwark’s armour, opening an artery in his abdomen. She then sliced through the tendons behind the fiend’s knees with her sword, and he crashed hard to the stone.
Leap left, Tee.
The Heiress jumped to her left, directly into the path of a descending khurl. She parried in time, deflecting the weapon away from her throat – but only just. Her dagger slid through the eye-slit of her attacker’s visor. She twisted away from the condemned Dwark’s groping gauntlet. Her sword rose and fell, hacking the offending hand off at the wrist.
What the hell, little brother?
Sorry, sister. My left, your right. Oops?
The bodies of six dead or dying dwar-Durka littered the stone floor of the fissure. The huge forms of three very angry living ones slowly circled about the young Fiann,
A little help here, brother?
Aback a strangely placid mirarran, the boy tilted his head to one side.
What for, Tee-tee? You’re doing so well! It’s like you know what they’re going to do before they do it.
That’s because you’re telling me, silly!
You afford yourself too little credit, and afford me too mu…uh-oh.
Tielle scowled. Uh-oh? What uh-oh? What do you –
The trio of Dwarks attacked her simultaneously, their strikes perfectly synchronized to render it impossible for the girl to fend against them all. Improbable, rather. For very little in that world or in any other was truly impossible.
Calmly, Chadh slipped down from his mount.
The Heiress to the House of Mirmaddon ducked one khurl and dodged another, while she caught the last with the blade of her sword. The impact of the blow shuddered up the steel into her hand, shooting slivers of pain through her bones. Her sword arm fell slack as she rolled away from a savage slash. She spun the dirric in her right hand, catching it by the blade, then threw it tip-first through a Dwark’s blazing eye into his brain. She switched hands with her sword deftly enough to deflect another whirling khurl away from her head. But in doing so, her weapon flew from her grasp, and she stumbled backward into the huge powerful arms of one of the two fiends left standing. The brute was frighteningly strong, and her feeble efforts to break loose were made even more futile by her useless left arm. The second dwar-Durk loomed before her, his huge khurl raised menacingly.
Tielle ceased her struggle and, strangely enough, smiled.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”
The Dwark’s gruesome face scrunched into a scowl. He then marked the dark distressed look in the eyes of the girl’s captor, and turned to follow the direction of his gaze.
His heart stuttered in his chest.
All the castaway khurlur that had been lying on the ground were afloat in the grey air, hovering, hanging there as though held by unseen hands. Behind them stood a young boy with an odd expression on his face, his smooth soft features seeming older than they should have done. Colder, somehow. Harder. And the thing in the lad’s eyes was horrifying.
The Dwark decided to charge the child, but before he could move, all seven khurlur flew at him with astonishing velocity. The fiend felt nothing when the blackness came. His corpse fell to the earth in chunks.
Yet in the unwanted embrace of the last Dwark standing, Tielle sighed at the steaming lumps of grey meat.
“Told you so.”
The boy simply stood there, several yards away, seven filth-stained khurlur poised in the air about him, an eighth rising to join them.
The dwar-Durk clasped the Fiann more tightly to him. She managed to wiggle her right hand free, tapping one of his vambraces lightly with her fingers.
“I would let me go now,” the girl advised. “Just saying.”
The Dwark responded by crushing the breath from her breast. He raised the notched blade of his khurl to her pretty white throat.
“Drop them. Drop them all, or I’ll kill the little bitch.”
Tielle was almost thankful that she could not inhale, so rancid was the brute’s breath. Unfortunately, she had not clapped her lips closed quickly enough, and her tongue twisted against the taste.
The fiend pressed his weapon’s wicked edge more forcefully against her supple skin. Tiny bubbles of blood bloomed.
“Drop them, demon. Drop them now.”
The boy cocked his head curiously to one side, then to the other. He blinked slowly. And the eight khurlur fell clattering to the stone.
The brute’s black beard parted in a grotesque yellow grin.
“Good boy. Smart boy.”
And he was about to drag the ragged blade across the girl’s throat – he had intended to do so all along – but the lad met his flaming gaze, met it and held it, and the dwar-Durk’s heart lurched within his chest for that which he saw in those horrible eyes.
The boy spoke then. One word. And one word only.
“Die.”
And the dwar-Durk died.
Tielle casually stepped from the corpse’s clasp as it collapsed. She inhaled deeply, gratefully, before casting the dead brute a disdainful look.
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Two grey mirarra and one black one nickered, nodding their noble heads.
Tielle stooped for her sword, tucked it under her arm, plucked her dirric from the eye it had impaled, wiped both blades on a dead Dwark’s backside. She then walked to where her brother stood. The boy was silent and motionless, breathing deeply, steadily, his eyes closed as though he had fallen asleep on his feet.
Are you all right, Chadh?
The boy opened his eyes. He graced her with a curious and somewhat ironic smile, but offered no further reply.
That was risky, brother. Do you think anyone saw?
Chadh shrugged, shook his head.
The Heiress peered along the length of the fissure. The way ahead was clear, save the hundreds upon hundreds of dwar-Durkash dead. Apparently Arumarron, Zalkan and the kulgord of Daradur had chased the rest around the corner into the canyon.
Good enough, then. Tielle gestured to her shattered arm with her good one. Would you be so kind, little brother?
Chadh waved one hand, and pain fled the Fiann’s limp limb, the broken bones i
nstantly binding, mending. Tielle moved her arm, flexing and bending, testing its flexibility, strength, range of motion. Satisfied, she looked up and smiled.
But her brother had already turned away, and was mounting one of the mirarra.
Come, Tee-tee. I fear… I know… horrible things have happened. It hurts to see them, but I can’t look away. The boy sniffled. It hurts, sister. It hurts so much.
The Heiress to the House of Mirmaddon strode toward another steed, her head lowered, her eyes upon the blood-smeared stone.
Yes, Chadh. Yes, it does.
She moved to climb aback Arumarron’s monstrous mirarran, but the little boy interrupted her mid-mount –
Ride with me on this one, Tee. Please. I’m afraid of horses.
Mundar battered the mightiest dwar-Durk of all to the ground. The immense brute strove to rise, heaving himself upward for the third time. Each successive struggle to retain his feet seemed more excruciating than the last. But for pride or for passion of for something else entirely, the Drone persevered. A spray of sparks stung his eyes as he blocked a blow with a dented vambrace; another clout clanged off his metal-plated shoulder a mere finger’s width from his neck; a third narrowly missed his midriff. He stumbled backward, wavered, weaving for balance.
The Darad permitted his opponent a brief reprieve, if only because his own fatigue was become pervasive, prohibitive. The exhausted Warder leaned on one war-axe, breathing heavily, gazing through a thin red film of his own blood. His exertion had slowed the healing of his many wounds, and the rock at his feet was stained a deep and disturbing crimson.
The two combatants stared at one another. Said nothing. Just stared. Watching, waiting. Taking measure.
Then the Drone hoisted his weapon. Mundar raised both of his own.
Each hulking warrior spat on the slickened stone.
And they came together again in a horrendous crash of metal and thew. Despite Mundar’s grievous injuries and his extreme enervation, the struggle appeared even for a time, with neither fighter gaining an advantage over the other. But the Darad was seriously hurt and the dwar-Durk had miraculously managed to remain without wound, and the latter soon surged against the former in a storm of Hag-fire and savagely slashing steel.
It was all Mundar could do to block and parry, evade and absorb, for he had insufficient vigour with which to counter. He was driven back, first to one knee, then two. And as he felt himself faltering, failing, the Darad reached deep within himself, calling upon on his very last reserves for one final all-or-nothing expenditure of his vanishing strength.
And the Maiden Earth in him rose in wrath.
Lalindel and his glorious Sul Athaifain alighted throughout the canyon, shining stars of heavenly hope fallen to earth, come to repel the Darkness. And to these blazing suns were drawn both friend and foe: The women and children of the Fiannar like lost and weary wanderers attracted to the comforts of a campfire; the murderous dwar-Durka of the Drone drawn like metal-clad moths to flame.
Thus, several smaller encounters were then fought within the larger whole of the Battle of Allaura. And many of those clashes did favour the Sun Knights and the surviving sons and daughters of Defurien. But others among those who had come from Gith Glennin did not fare so well. For the dwar-Durkash horde was vast, so very vast, and the earthblight the fiends wielded was a power with which the Athair were unfamiliar, and for which they were ill-prepared. And there fell that day in that dreadful place brave Lyrrienn, she of the Golden Heart, and Arymeryl, he of the Laughing Eyes. And kind-souled Derru Tollir, Guardian of the Gith, stood like a pillar of sunfire, and half a hundred Dwarks met their demises on her blazing blade. But a torrent of urthvennim burned her, and Derru’s holy Light dimmed, and she and all the Deathward souls she had sought to save were hacked down and hewn apart.
And though First Knight Lalindel cried aloud for valour and vengeance, the warriors of the Sul Athaifain found more tears than fire in their eyes. Alas, their love for the Fiannar blinded them, and their sorrow for the horrors they saw shook them terribly, and their hearts broke in their breasts. Righteous wrath forsook them then, and their strength abandoned them. One by one, the splendrous Sun Knights of the Neverborn died.
And all hope they had brought there that morning died with them.
She had come so far. And now she was close, so very close. So close that her heart ached. Her eyes were wet with wind and tears, and her throat was tight and dry. Escape was in sight, within her reach, a matter of seventy short yards or less. But either the Teller had a different tale to tell, or callous Fate had foiled him and fouled the narrative.
For it was not to be.
They came at the Shield Maiden of the Fiannar in one inexorable wave. A deluge of hate and rage and steel. Hundreds of dwar-Durka poured from the fissure that had led into the basin – and that was to have led Caelle and the babe behind her buckler back out. Most of the fiends simply stampeded past her, such was their momentum and the force of the terror that drove them. But then that fear became a furor, and their flight turned into an onslaught, and they fell upon the few remaining Deathward with neither ruth nor reason. Many – how many she did not know – checked their charge to test Caelle’s own mettle and metal. She was compelled to stand her ground, and so gained no more.
The Fiannar were formidable warriors, trained from birth in the art of battle and all its aspects. They were masters of weapons, of movement, open-handed combat. Tactics, strategy, the philosophy of war. Concentration, pain and energy management, even breathing. The least of them was better than the best of Men. But some of the Deathward were different than the rest. Stronger, faster, cerebrally superior. Gifted, one might consider them. The edges of their intellects were sharper, the fire in their hearts burned hotter, and the Light that was their souls shone brighter. They were as the Deathward of olde, these extraordinary individuals – akin and kin to the fiannari that had held the Rillaghir Defyrine in the dying days of the First Earth.
And even among these exceptional elite, Caelle of the House of Defurien was remarkable.
Nevertheless, she was but one warrior with but one available arm – for she could not, would not risk the welfare of the babe concealed behind her shield, not in any way that she could possibly avoid. The foes teeming and teaming against her were without number. And the urthvennim enhanced and invigorated them, made their power more perverse, made them worse than they were.
The Shield Maiden danced her dance of death among the raving Dwarks. She was become a dervish of dust and dreams, a thing more of smoke than of substance. Such grace, such elegance, such terribly lethal allure. Fiends died. And then she was more – she was steel and ice and cold hard rage, possessed of incredible power, her Eyes of Doom focused and feral, her war braids lashing the morn like whips of black fire. More dwar-Durka died. And then she was less than mist once again, elemental and ethereal, and she pranced in the slop of the slain, capered and swayed and spun away.
However, one can only dance alone for so long before dancing to one’s last song.
A khurl sliced the flesh of Caelle’s left thigh. Blood spurted. A hammerlike fist smote her right shoulder. Bones cracked. The broad flat of a blade glanced off her skull. The world whorled.
Yet still she danced. Oh, how she danced!
And although the Shield Maiden was essentially alone, she was not entirely so. Aranion, sweet beautiful Aranion, was ever and always with her. She would not, could not permit him to be taken. Not ever.
And so she would save the last dance for him.
No one sees the glittering spear of the Seer sailing, seemingky on its own, through the melee. Those yet living are entirely engrossed with either slaughter or survival. The mortally wounded are absorbed with easing the agony of dying. And the dead no longer care enough to look.
She carries the spear as she dashes across the killing ground, racing to the succour of the sister to her soul. But her beloved friend is no longer in the company of the fiery-haired Watcher and th
e Heir to the House of Cilcannan.
Fearing she is overlate, she glides to a halt. She peers about her, her Seer’s eyes aswirl, searching the swaths of slain Fiannar, dreading what she might find. But then her attention is drawn away by a familiar voice bellowing of wrath and war and retribution.
“Eccuron! Eccuron!” And “Arrenhoth! Arrenhoth!” And then, “Sarrane! Sarrane!! Mother!!!”
“Arumarron!” she cries. “My son!”
But, of course, he cannot hear her. She has yet to master that skill, the talent of talking to the living, of having them heed her.
She sees him now, a titanic terror, an apocalyptic apparition bathed in black blood. So much like his father. Too much, she once thought, but now she is glad for his icy fury and his passion for battle. For Arumarron fights at the shoulder of the Shield Maiden. He and the one called the Harbinger. And against that terrible troika no dwar-Durka, no matter their number, can hope to stand.
Gripping her spear in both hands, she briefly contemplates joining them. Considers fighting at their side. But she concludes that she would be too much of a distraction, a disruption, that her presence would do more harm than good.
Suddenly feeling very alone, she lowers her spear. All around her, her beautiful people – women, children, youths – and their mirarra lay dead and dying. Her Lady is lost. As is she. As are they all.
Despair creeps close. Closer than it ever had while she was alive. It reaches for her, touches her cold hand, and her soul shivers.
