Deaths: approximately 8700.
Kingdom Army of Nearhon led by the Archmage Magnar. Six Rippers destroyed.
Deaths: approximately 12300.
— Excerpt from the War Histories of Valendo
Standing still as a statue in the centre of Beldon Valley, with his cavalry and soldiers grouped nearby, Pragius reached deep underground with his battle sense. Tantalising his awareness like the distant echo of water dripping in a cave was the bone dust of ancient Beldon tribesmen. Trapped in eternity, they fought, mingled and then mated with the bones of men coming on their fast horses from the great Nearhon plains in the north.
Crawling up layers of soil with his senses, he found tribesmen from the southern valleys who invaded and did the same all over again. Rising further, the cremated remains of the Ruberan Pilgrim Fathers, sent to colonise in the name of the Church of the Sun, impregnated the soil. Strong men, armoured by metal and faith, overcame and erased from history the last ancestors of the Beldon tribe. Etched in Pragius’ mind was all of Valendo’s recorded history, but the bones and ash told their own story of Valendo built on blood, steel and divine entitlement.
Searching higher, Pragius found the first battle King Klonag had fought here twenty-five years ago. The battle where Klonag had crossed swords and locked eyes with General Garon Artifex-Dendra himself. Fragmented and mixed as the remains of that battle were, Pragius could not be sure of numbers. It was as if a crowd of children had come in, picking up everything they could find, losing interest and casting it aside.
Clambering higher with his senses revealed Magnar’s first attempt on Beldon Valley eighteen years ago, bringing the power mage fire to this field for the first time. Deadliest of all the battles yet fought. It could be five thousand five hundred, it could be more and with so many turned to ash in the fires he had no way to know.
A thought forced its way into Pragius’ mind: Find them… just below the surface, Pragius — that is where your prize lies…
Expanses of fertile soil blanketing the dead of the last great Battle of Beldon Valley became a map in his mind as his battle sense rose to the surface. Pragius’ words, as dry as ancient bone dust, made the ground hum and vibrate. Loose stones danced a jig on the surface. Small insects that could, took to the wing and fled. Glistening worms spewed onto the surface and writhed in silent panic. Confused beetles fell about on their backs and centipedes scurried for non-existent shelter. The soil split, cracked open wider, sprayed into the air, fell like rain and gathered into drifts.
Why am I doing this? thought Pragius.
Because it is… the next step. Your army, came the force-fed thought as the book snared Pragius’ mind once again.
To what end? he asked. Why should I care about an army?
Because we ask it. We need it, came the reply.
Who is we? Why should I care about we? What about me? Pragius argued silently.
Conquer Valendo and Emiria with us and you will have free rein over all the souls you could possibly desire.
I could go where I please and have that anyway.
We can help you find the most beautiful that you crave.
And I can spend as long as I like searching. I don’t need you.
Wrenching on Pragius’ mind, the thoughts that were not his own refocused his attention on the excavation task. Staring at a grey sky, he watched black and white birds gather on the wing, spiralling in the air over his harvest site. The rich pickings, better than anything a farm plough brings to the surface, could not tempt the birds down, for even they had the sense to avoid the unholy scene. Pragius knew both the Nearhon Plainlanders and Whitelanders buried their dead. By either of their faiths, his task was sacrilegious. The souls of the ancestors should be howling their anguish across the plains. If they were out there, the undead mage could not see or hear them.
Metal, living flesh and bone entered the reach of Pragius’ battle sense. Led by six horsemen, the soldiers were organised, resolute and marching with sword and shield, the fauna of the ground unflinching at their approach. Pragius calmly cursed to himself. He wasn’t ready — he wouldn’t be ready unless he acted with more haste. Pacing around the old battleground, he threw his hands in the air over and over again. Fountains of soil erupted skywards, moving like violent dust demons. Pragius sensed the first of his new recruits exposed to the air for the first time in fifteen years. Reaching into the magic at the edge of his mind, his thoughts pulled out fine flows of energy. Deep groans laced with a hiss that were almost words directed the white energy to open cracks into a parallel smoke-filled realm. He plunged into it with his mind. Tumultuous anti-nature and black power rose to overwhelm him, then cowered before his predatory intent. He drew threads of energy, like dark smoke ropes unseen in the world of men, and tied them to the corpses in the ground. Rise, he thought.
Bone fingers unclenched one by one and stretched wide as if to relieve stiffness in muscles that were not there. Arms and backs straightened from curled up sleeping positions, shifting loosened earth like old woollen blankets. The dead soldiers of the Nearhon army clawed up from their pits, searched in the soil for lost weapons and shields and gathered before their new general. They stood to attention, yellowed grey bones dripping with the tattered remains of armour as if a mad and ancient washerwoman had hung out the results of her labours to dry.
Not quick enough! Pragius mentally growled as he sensed and saw Valendo soldiers break to the east and west in a run, attempting to bypass the skeletal army that already outnumbered them. Pragius spoke the angry words of the battle mage that veteran soldiers knew and feared. Mage fire burst from the ground, drawing a line all the way from the eastern to western sides of the valley like a ship designer’s pencil making a grand plan.
The horses of the remaining cavalrymen abruptly ceased their gallop and reared in refusal to cross the burning line. Commander Harvey of Norvale dismounted from his horse with a stagger and regarded the fires with a penetrating stare from his deep green eyes. In his mind, he prayed that what the old general had taught him about mage fire was true. The picture in the Great Hall of Dendra Castle showed the old general stepping into the flames to fight the Ripper, beard and hair on fire. Harvey ran a hand down his thin, clean shaven face, taking a layer of cold sweat with it, and then dug up the resolve he needed and yelled back at his men. ‘Run for all your worth and jump through the fire. Do it now!’ He ran, the bright wall of flame striking him with all its heat. His hair ignited, leather armour baked and steamed, skin went red and he fell out the other side of the fire smoking and beating out the flames. Turning, he watched others with the courage to follow his lead.
Pragius grimaced in his mind and spoke angry words again, conjuring another line of flames that stretched across the valley, doubling the width of his burning wall. With a thought, he divided his cavalry and they charged on the two bands of men that had made it through. He turned his attention to the remainder of the Valendo soldiers before him, like a groundskeeper looking on dead leaves in a courtyard as he considers sweeping them up. The old Nearhon soldiers, some still rising from the ground trailing soil, swept in an arc around them with a speed defying their geriatric appearance, cutting off the Valendo soldiers’ escape route back north. The old Nearhon soldiers rushed inwards with their rusting swords. The Valendo soldiers started to fall and Pragius summoned more black smoke ropes, snaring their soulless bodies and commanding them to join the attack. The necromantic rot ate at the Valendo soldier’s from the outside inwards, until the soul behind the last pair of terror-filled eyes fled the battlefield.
Pragius’ attention was quickly drawn back to the south, towards Dendra Castle. The air filled with a repeated pulsing echo from the castle battlements as bright streaks of light shot into his undead cavalry, stalling their charge as they galloped at the heels of the Valendo soldiers. A gap had opened between his cavalry and the foot soldiers they pursued. Again, pinpricks of light shot from the castle battlements at his cavalry, bu
rsting into balls of white fire and shattering the skeletal horses. Pragius fixed his sight and his battle sense on the ground below the castle wall, and with a thought, a word and the flick of his bony wrists he was there, pouring his own magic back at the man in blue-green robes on the battlements above. Pragius noted the castle soldiers had been busy; the valley was now blocked by a makeshift wall of earth and stone. He sensed the built-in chicane of passageways where the escaping soldiers ran. While he continued to trade energy with the Archmage of Valendo he tested the defences before him with his battle sense. He could see no ground inside the castle or without that he could transport himself onto. Hundreds of men stood ready behind the makeshift wall. It was a killing zone.
Cory stood on the battlements, the last humming echoes of Zeivite’s energy bolts fleeing down the valley. A boom rushed after the echoes and Cory heard the crackle of mage fire burning on the castle’s approach road. He watched Zeivite watching Pragius, who turned away and walked north into the valley, leaving hundreds of undead soldiers behind. The remaining hundred or so cavalry followed him like giant hunting dogs. Zeivite performed a ritual now familiar to Cory, raising his hands then dropping them, and the crackling fires ceased. A gentle breeze carried away the last of the heat, and it seemed everyone on the castle battlements waited for something. Only the occasional cough or creak of leather polluted the silence. Even Zeivite just stared vacantly, his mind engaged elsewhere. Abruptly he reached into his robes and snatched out his telescope, holding it out in front of Cory. Cory took it and hunted the valley with the telescope’s narrow view until he found and tracked the undead mage to the scene of his continuing excavations. More of the dead clambered to join the throng on the surface. Cory whispered the curse soldiers use in the tavern. ‘I could never have anticipated Pragius would abandon the attack on Tranmure and move here, then practically destroy the Norvale regiment. There seems no end to the mess I can make. Did my grandfather ever experience days like this?’
‘Oh, he had a few of them,’ Zeivite murmured as the sound of a voice shouting rose up from the castle gates. ‘Someone is not happy.’
‘It’s Harvey. At least he made it, and he can come and join the unhappy club. I’m starting to get used to people yelling at me.’
There was a hint of the morose in Cory’s voice. Zeivite cast Cory a sideways look then headed off along the battlements towards the main keep.
At a quick glance, Cory reckoned Harvey had made it into the courtyard with around two hundred men. All players on a stage to an audience of thousands more already holding up inside the castle. Many had a gallery view from the battlements. Cory strode purposefully down the steps off the battlements, shutting out of his mind everyone except Harvey, and removed his gauntlet as he approached, holding his hand out for the warrior’s handshake. Harvey continued his ranting as he took the handshake out of habit but barely drew breath as he did. Cory felt as if he were holding onto the cord of one of his grandfather’s kites he used to fly from the battlements on a windy day. ‘Harvey, stop!’ Cory yelled. ‘I can’t hear half of what you’re saying. It’s been a bad day, a bad week. What did the old general tell us about battle plans and first contact with the enemy?’
Harvey shut his mouth and stood still, chest heaving.
‘This attack came from nowhere,’ said Cory, ‘we haven’t had a moment to make a plan. When I sent orders for you to come south, Tranmure was under attack. Things changed fast, Harvey. Do you understand?’
Harvey nodded, staring up at the castle towers. ‘I can’t find Joel,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘He’s not here. I think I left him behind.’
‘Sergeant Joel, present yourself up front,’ Cory ordered, summoning his best drill sergeant voice that normally had soldiers jumping into action. The only reply was the hiss of wind gusting through the battlement embrasures. ‘Harvey, I’m sorry. I’ve lost parents and my brother too in all this. Pragius has become that walking horror you encountered in the valley. One of our own has become the enemy, and he is a battle mage with a power like nothing my grandfather ever fought. It’s a bad business. We’ve got work to do, plans to make.’
‘How we can fight an enemy that deals out death so easily… and so fast? And the thousands it commands?’ Harvey’s gaze remained fixed up at the towers.
‘We’ll think of a way. Find somewhere to get your men sheltered. As you can see, we’re short on space, food and water. Make the most of what you can find.’ Cory finally released Harvey’s hand and the soldier turned to give orders to what remained of his men.
Cory glanced around the courtyard and battlements before striding off into the keep. The only place he could think of being right now was his grandfather’s… no, his… office.
Three men stood together on the battlements watching Cory leave. The first man was Ambassador Xolt of Emiria with his powerfully chiselled features watching with blue eyes so pale they were almost grey. The man in the middle, in black priest’s robes with fearful green eyes, was Sebastian. King Sebastian. The last was Quain; his blue eyes shone, apparently eager at the prospect of a new adventure.
‘Come on, let’s go and see the old general,’ said Quain, leading on before a puzzled Sebastian could reply. Sebastian followed. Xolt cast an appraising eye over the men in the castle and then the gathering mass of bone figures stretching into the valley before he followed them.
***
‘Wine?’ Quain enquired, lifting a jug from the massive oak table in the centre of the Great Hall and sniffing at the rim as Xolt entered. Xolt nodded and Sebastian shrugged as he watched Quain pour. Sebastian took the pewter goblet offered to him. Sipping on the heavy fruit flavours, he started to wonder where in the room to stand, what to look at or what to say. What was he doing here?
Xolt took a goblet of wine in his left hand and tucked his right-hand thumb into his belt before turning around to examine the painting above the fireplace. Sebastian watched Xolt’s face frown before softening into a smile that seemed out of place on the stern man’s face. ‘You don’t have to use a weapon to be a warrior.’
Xolt spoke with the kind of reverence Sebastian was used to hearing from the Archpriest Ranold while delivering a sermon. ‘A fine choice of words from one who is, or was a warrior,’ Sebastian replied.
Xolt answered while his eyes remained on the painting of Garon fighting the burning Ripper. ‘Oh no, Sebastian, they are not my words. It is what your grandfather told me after I discovered I would never wield a sword again. Being a warrior is a state of mind, he said. And he was right, however much I doubted it at the time. It looks to me like he cheated and used his left hand when his sword arm was wounded.’ Xolt chuckled, and that was even more out of place than the smile. ‘Do you want to know something, Sebastian?’ He turned and looked the young king in the eye. Sebastian shrugged and nodded. ‘Orchestral music bores me. I much prefer the playhouses in Tri or even dining and sharing old war stories with soldiers.’ Xolt paused, giving time for Sebastian to reply.
‘But you came to the concert when I invited you. Why?’
‘Maybe I got a bit sentimental. Maybe an old warrior’s sixth sense or some kind of superstition. Whichever it was, I decided at the moment of your invitation to follow the lead of the Artifex-Dendra in the room, since doing exactly that had saved my life at the Battle of Tri Valley Pass. That was twenty years ago.’ Xolt gestured with his goblet as he spoke. ‘We held on for three days in the keep on the border, but it wasn’t a place to stand up to a long siege. We faced dehydration, starvation or fleeing back to Tri for reinforcements. The general, your grandfather, arrived with a cavalry regiment that should not have been in Emirian territory. They ran down enough of King Klonag’s men to force them to retreat once we came out from keep and joined the fight. Not before Klonag took a piece of me with that enchanted blade he uses.’ Xolt set his goblet down on the mantel piece and rubbed on his right shoulder as if the memory reawakened old pain. ‘”What is the use of a warrior who can’t hold a s
word?” I asked him. “You don’t have to use a weapon to be a warrior,” was his answer. Look —’ Xolt hurried to the Great Hall window facing north over Beldon Valley ‘— look down there now.’
Sebastian followed and touched his nose on the window, wondering what it was he was supposed to see. In the distance, the undead army continued to gather and take form. Sebastian looked down into the castle courtyard. Men were standing, sitting and lying around everywhere. ‘What am I supposed to see?’
‘You’re supposed to see the warrior who doesn’t hold a weapon,’ Xolt replied.
Sebastian watched. Scanning the courtyard and the top of the battlements, he could see soldiers. The only other person he saw was a dead-on-her-feet Suki hauling herself, a bucket of water and a ladle around, filling the tin cups soldiers carried.
‘With the enemy on the horizon, she fights a battle against thirst and hunger,’ Xolt said. ‘Believe me, after the siege at the keep, I know what thirst and hunger feel like, and it’s no condition to fight in.’
‘I suppose I see what you mean. But what can I do?’
‘You would have to ask whoever knows you best that question.’
‘That would be my brother,’ Sebastian said, and then lowered his voice to add, ‘but we’re not really talking right now.’
‘We can start with what you’ve already done.’
‘I’m not sure I’ve done anything.’
‘Ask me where I would have been if I had not accepted your hospitality and gone to the concert.’
Sebastian’s face was as blank as his mind.
‘All right, I will pretend you asked. I would have gone to the annual commander’s dinner at your father’s invitation.’
‘And you would have been killed in the palace,’ said Sebastian.
‘Or worse. So, in your own way, you have already saved my life. I’m no longer in a position to offer Valendo military help. I have no messenger birds with me to contact Tri. So I’ll ask you again, what do you need?’
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