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

by Sean Rodden

  It is then that she sees the Drone. Her slayer. Opposing the Stone Lord. Despair disperses. She permits herself a dark smile. And there is nothing on either side of the grave grimmer than the grin of a ghost.

  But before she can rush that way, the world begins to rumble…

  The Solemate of the Queen staggered beneath a merciless barrage of gyring war-axes. The huge Dwark crouched low to the ground, head down, hunkered within the bunker of his glowing red armour. Mundar chopped and sliced at him with a viciousness the Darad had never before shown, never before known. Astonishingly, the Drone was somehow able to deflect the worst of his adversary’s attacks while cushioning and absorbing the rest. Blow after blow simply clanged off the Solemate’s khurl or clattered away from his chain and plate. Frustrated and furious, Mundar struck again and again and still again – but ever was he denied. His own strength long since exhausted, the Stone Lord consumed the gifts of the Maiden within him until there endured only enough to allow him to stand upright. And even then, only just. He stumbled back, teetered, and would have fallen were his war-axes not braced upon the ground. Blinded by his own blood, his breath came in sharp rasps and shrill wheezes. He could not so much as lift his arms.

  And then, like a small child curled into a ball and weeping, the Drone started to shake.

  However, it was not for sorrow that the massive dwar-Durk shuddered so. Neither for pain nor fear. Nor even for rage.

  But for laughter.

  The Solemate of the Queen rose. His armour was savagely dented and scored. The blade of his weapon was badly notched. But he himself was whole and hale, and remained entirely – and incredibly – uninjured.

  The Drone’s head swivelled slowly on his thick neck. Flames of glee leaped in his eyes as he surveyed the canyon. A few small groups of Deathward warriors yet stood, most of these near the centre and against the western wall of the gorge; broken beaten bitches and their slack-faced gets gathered around solitary Ath-holes like clumps of grey ash about failing fires, nothing more than dust on fool’s gold.

  Nearby, a lone Fiann with a shield far too small to be of any real use fought fiercely against an indeterminable number of the Solemate’s spawn. Fiercely yet futilely. Ah, such wasted valour, so beautiful to behold. He became vaguely aware then of someone shouting a repetitive litany of foolish Fiannian names, the shouts growing louder as the shouter drew nearer. But the Drone’s laughter soon drowned all other sound as he watched his swarm smother the stubborn slut beneath a deluge of Dwarkash steel.

  He then looked back upon his own opponent – what was left of the blond-bearded bastard, anyway – and his grin was yellow and mocking.

  “Aptly named are you, Darad.” The Solemate snorted. His eyes burned with a hard and cruel humour. “So very fitting is your title – ‘the Friendly One’ – for you fight as though you have not an enemy in all the world.”

  Mundar did not respond. Because he could not respond. He had not the strength. He just stood there, bleeding.

  And then the Drone’s laughter ceased, leaving a hollowness in the air, a vacuum of ominous certainty, of inevitability. The dwar-Durk’s armour creaked as he hefted his enormous khurl.

  “Enough play.”

  There came then a trembling in the stone underfoot, faint and far at first, but swiftly intensifying, drawing nearer. A shaking and a quaking. As though a great chthonic giant was rising from an overlong slumber. Or like the waking of the very earth.

  “What is this?” the Solemate sneered into his moustaches as the rocking of the rock jarred his bones. “Who comes to me now, so eager for death?”

  And then it was Mundar who laughed. Chuckled, rather, for that was the most he could muster. And past a bloody smile and splintered teeth, he managed to murmur another sound. A single word. A name.

  Quoth the Friendly One –

  “Drogul.”

  Stone and fucking steel.

  The Mighty One erupted from the floor of the gorge with such force that he was propelled high into the pained and painted morning air. He seemed to hang there for a moment, suspended in space and time, a superpotent omen of death and destruction. And then he plummeted to earth, crashing among the horrified horde, and the stone cracked and shattered where he struck. Everything around him that did not wear rillaghir was devastated, demolished, destroyed in the black tempest of his war-axe. No Dwark even attempted to confront him. They but stood where they were, wide-eyed and stammering. Or they turned to run from him, screaming. Either way, he killed them.

  Nearly one hundred Daradur had gone into the haze-shrouded stone at Doomfall and down through the rich black soil of the Cedorrin. Fewer than eighty exploded from the blood-sopped, corpse-strewn basin before Allaura. For the hard way of the urthrudd had taken more than a score of mighty souls back to the bosom of the Mother. Back to the place of their Making. Metal to metal, rock to rock.

  But the strongest and the stoutest endured.

  Drogul the kirun-tar. Brulwar, uldwan of the uldwar, Earthmaster to the Wandering Guard. Gigantic Gulgrum. The maniacal Wild One. And so many others Made for mythos, hewn of the metal-veined rock of legends.

  And, to their own subdued surprise, these mighty mara-Waratur were joined by Ten Axes of the kanga-Kulgum. Whence Captain Jadun and capable Dandar and their kulgord had come, they did not know. There was a tale to be told there, a good one, certainly. But not then. Then was a time for avengement and massacre, no quarter offered, no prisoners taken, no mercy given.

  Initially, each Stone Lord stood and slew in the place where he had emerged from the earth. But the hulking warriors soon sought one another, gathering in a pair of positions, both of which stretched the breadth of the basin: One before the egress of the fissure; the other beneath the gore-spattered Glass Gate. And the horde of Dwarks was trapped twixt the two – between the axiomatic rock and the proverbial hard place.

  Between stone and steel.

  The two formations of Daradur moved forward then, each converging upon the other, the entire howling horde of enemies ensnared in the vise. Drogul led the line below the Wall. An irresistible force threshing his way through the throng, his aspect even more monstrous than the mask he had left behind. Brulwar captained the southern formation. The urthvennim wielded by the Red Dwarks was no match for the uldwan Dor’s mastery of the Maiden. And Dulgar charged back and forth between both positions, a free radical of wrath and rage, and wherever he went, there went also pain and fear and certain death.

  The Stone Lords slaughtered the shrieking fiends with a heartlessness far beyond contempt, a callousness nigh upon depravity, turpitude. They killed without compunction, without conscience, with neither care nor qualm. Not because they enjoyed it, but because it was necessary. Because they could, because they should.

  And so they did.

  As the Daradur raged past them, solitary warriors and little ragged bands of the Fiannar took a collective knee, fists to their hearts, eyes upon the ensanguined ground. Above them, a solitary Golden Strype, trodden and sodden, sagged before the red breath of the dead god. They did not weep, those wretched few. They did not cheer. And they did not raise their gazes until the extermination of their enemies was done. They had seen death in excess already.

  And much of that death, far too much of that death, belonged to their kin. Mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters who had given all. But those wretched few who bowed in the blood of dead children that day, those wretched few caked from helm to boot in the gore of war, those wretched, sweat-soaked, gloss-eyed few had survived. And their survival was all they had to give.

  Someway, someday, that would have to be enough.

  The Sun Knights of the Neverborn hovered at the extreme edge of the Evvanin, lined along the battlements of Allaura and the rims of the canyon’s cliffs. They sat astride their elliamir in silence, their bell-song hushed, their Light dimmed. Below them, a second massacre was following close upon the first, as the Daradur brutalized a foe several times their number. Behind the str
ong broad backs of the Stone Lords, fatigued women and children of the Fiannar knelt solemnly beneath a beaten banner, not looking, not speaking, barely breathing.

  “I have turned away from one horror, only to find another,” said the last of the Athair to reach the edge of the Evannin above Allaura.

  “Horror, Thrannien? The sumanam – ?”

  “Is slain, brother. But I speak of… another.”

  “Ah.” Prince Evangael sighed. “I see. Like his Lady before him, the Lord of the Fiannar will be missed.”

  “Wherever we have gone, horror has followed. We are ever pursued, brother.”

  “Yes. And ever will be.”

  Prince Thrannien gestured with his bow. “We should go down to them. We have done this. We must undo this.”

  “No, Thrannien. We should not. And we cannot undo what has been done.” The Sun Lord’s voice was steady, yet the sorrow there was poignant, profound. “We are come too late, and are unneeded now. And we cannot go down to them. I fear our presence would be… unwelcome.”

  Prince Thrannien said nothing for a moment. His left hand was wrapped tightly about his bow, his right gripped the shaft of a golden arrow.

  “Ingallin.”

  “Yes, Thrannien. Ingallin did this. Or permitted it to be done. That much is certain. His very absence declares his guilt. His guilt… and our shame.”

  “This was all superbly organized and orchestrated, and almost flawlessly executed. Eryn Ruil was a ruse, Doomfall but a distraction. The enemy’s target was the women and the children of the Fiannar from the outset. The enemy knew they would away to Allaura long before their doing so was decided at the Stone of Scullain. The anticipation, the coordination that was necessary, the deviousness of it all – it all feels so frightfully familiar.”

  “Yes,” agreed Evangael. “It does.”

  “This was not the work of the Wraithren.”

  “No. It was not.”

  “This was – “

  “Yes.”

  Thrannien was silent until the shiver that took him and shook him dissipated. He then pointed with the arrow, his gaze damp and dark.

  “Lalindel lives. Of his twenty, he is the only one.”

  Evangael nodded.

  “We will hear the First Knight’s tale. But not now. There is nothing we can do but return to Gith Glennin and report to Gavrayel and Aeline. We will await Lalindel there. He and our brother Yllufarr.” A pause. “My heart is heavy with foreboding that much more was lost here this day than is immediately apparent. Sundry sad stories will soon assail our ears.” Another pause, followed by a sigh. “May our souls be sufficiently sturdy to hear them.”

  Thrannien returned his bow to his shoulder, the arrow to its quiver.

  And the Sun Lords turned again into the ethers of the Eilla Evvanin, and led the Sul Athaifain away.

  They gathered their dead.

  Wordlessly, and with neither tear nor complaint, the weary women and children of the Fiannar stripped their fallen friends of all rillaghir and weapons of worth, then carried the corpses to the threshold of the Glass Gate. There a great grey mound did rise, a monument wrought not only of flesh and bone and leather and steel, but also of bravery, of sacrifice and unconquerable love. Nonetheless, it was an ephemeral thing, that mountain of honour and valour. One that would not last the night.

  No more than the husks of less than half-lived lives, awaiting fire.

  “Mundar is gone,” the young red-haired Fiann told the two hulking Daradur. She seemed near to sobbing, but her eyes were clear and hard. “Their leader took him. I saw it happen. As soon as you came, the Drone tore a great red gash in the air, dragged Mundar in, and vanished. I could not prevent it, I could not stop it from happening. I was too far away. He was… ah, he is my… my friend.” She paused to prevent her voice from cracking. “I am sorry.”

  Drogul waited for the girl to raise her eyes to his own.

  “Don’t worry about your friend, Fiann. Warder Mundar can take care of himself.”

  Chelyse nodded, and the Mighty One moved away.

  Brulwar lingered a moment longer.

  “Mundar’s tale is yet to be fully told, Watcher. As is your own. And the twain shall twine again – I’m as certain of this as I am of the stone under my feet.” The Earthmaster placed one massive hand on her shoulder. “Look for your friend when you expect him least.”

  Chelyse smiled and looked elsewhere, lest the Darad see her weep.

  Brulwar left her then, feeling strangely hollow and severed from himself, like a spirited man might feel upon dying, or an honest one after lying.

  She stands in the shadows of shadows, observing the mara-Waratur send the last of the duar-Durkash corspes sinking into the stone. Her people do not see her. She has already learned to conceal herself. She is even able to secrete her spear. However, should the Singers or the more watchful Watchers or the wide-eyed children look her way, she will surely be discovered – but they do not. They have no reason to search the shadows of shadows for shadows. They see more than enough darkness as it is.

  She watches as her folk assemble near the centre of the canyon, far from where the Fires of the Fallen will burn, yet close enough to feel the hot breath of the blaze upon their faces when the time comes for the Pyre to roar. Very few of them remain, a little more than two hundred, perhaps, with slightly fewer women than children. All are wan and worn, withered by war. The women crowd near the children, and the children allow them to do so while still attempting to appear stern and brave. Their faces reflect the horrors they have seen and survived – pale and haggard, somewhat slack, with eyes like painted grey marbles, peering inward. But they do not wail. And they do not weep.

  Because the Fiannar do not mourn.

  Then the great ones gather before them.

  Her sister Caelle is there, strong and straight despite her red wealth of wounds, the infant Aranion safe, secure and asleep in her arms. The Seer’s beloved son is there as well, towering at the Shield Maiden’s right shoulder; the Heir to the House of Cilcannan and the Watcher Chelyse stand at the other. The one called the Harbinger hovers close to Arumarron, in the way a worried uncle might watch over a wayward nephew. And Drogul and Dulgar are there, and Brulwar and Gulgrum. Captain Jadun and the urthron Dandar, as well. And First Knight Lalindel of the Sul Athaifain stands off to one side, silent with impossible sorrow, seeming very alone.

  And then she gasps as she sees another of her kin. Someone she did not expect to look upon again this side – whatever side this actually is – of the Light.

  The Lady Cerriste stands there, tall and austere, at the heart of the gorge, upon the very rock where she was slain. Her soul is whole, as is her whitewood staff; her armour and rillagh are pristine, and her auburn hair flutters on a phantom wind. About her shines a certain ambience of the Light, there yet not there, as though she exists in that placeless place where the beginning ends and the end begins.

  Cerriste is waiting, the Seer knows. Sarrane has seen this particular posture before. Calm impatience. Controlled annoyance. Things the Lady usually reserved for her husband.

  And then he is there.

  Alvarion. The Lord of the Fiannar. And he too walks in death.

  He looks upon his wife, and his kingly countenance is contorted with grief.

  “You?” he gasps quietly. “You should not be here.” The ‘here’ of which he speaks is not the basin before Allaura, obviously, but another place entirely. “Not here… not you. Not… yet.”

  “Oh? And you should be, husband?”

  Alvarion lowers his eyes. “I have failed you… us. I have failed us all.”

  But Cerriste smiles softly, and her eyes shine like silver suns.

  “You have failed no one, my husband. Our son is safe. Our people endure. All is as the Teller would have it. We cannot hope to understand why he tells the Tale he tells, nor can we comprehend the manner in which he tells it. But we can and must believe that the Tale is told for a reason, and that that reas
on is good and pure. Otherwise, what would be the purpose?”

  “What indeed, my wife.”

  “Come, husband.” The Lady extends her hand, and the Lord clasps it in his own. “Our time has come.”

  “Time,” he sighs sadly, “is the one thing of which I wish we had more.”

  “Oh, husband, we have nothing but time now.” The Lady of the Fiannar laughs then, and the sound is both joyful and sultry, like cool water sluicing over hot skin. “We have time for many things.”

  And the Lord and the Lady of the Deathward step into the Light. And are gone.

  Sarrane weeps a while in their wake.

  Then –

  “Are you coming, Seer?”

  She turns and looks upon two children who sit astride a mirarran. The girl is the bigger of the two, and is splattered with the dark blood of Dwarks. The boy seems entirely untouched. And untouchable.

  “You can see me?” she asks, wiping her ghostly eyes with ghostly hands.

  “Of course, Seer,” replies the girl. “We can hear you, too. We need… we want you to come with us now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  The girl opens her mouth, then closes it.

  Behind her, in a voice at once as young as he seems and as ancient as the stars, the boy says, “Away from here.”

  And in a rush, the Seer understands. Nevertheless, she hesitates. Her gaze seeks and finds Caelle and Aranion.

  “They will be fine, Seer,” says the boy. “Though they will need you soon enough. Rather, she will need you, and he will need her. But if you don’t come with us now, you will be lost to them – and to this World – forever.”

  She watches in silent pride and profound sorrow as her son approaches the Pyre, singing softly beneath his breath, flaming torch in hand.

  “Come, Seer,” repeats the girl. “Come now.”

  And she goes.

  20

  ESPERANCE

  “I wasn’t there, but I was told of it soon afterward.

  Some things make you wish you never learned of them,