by A. J. Smith
Halla allowed the citizens of Tiergarten a moment to look at her. The cheers had died down, but were now renewed in a surge of warm applause and shouting. She finally smiled. Perhaps her stoicism was swept away by the realization that they’d won. Ingrid hoped so.
With a raised hand, Halla quietened the crowds enough to be heard. ‘You all know me. You may have travelled with me from Hammerfall; perhaps from Jarvik, perhaps even from the wreck of the dragon fleet. Or you may have fought alongside me to defend Tiergarten. I thank each of you – some of you have saved my life.’ She glanced at Falling Cloud, then at Wulfrick. ‘Some more than once. And this victory belongs to all of us, and to all of Fjorlan, for a betrayer has been beaten and a land has been freed. All I did was kill our enemies until there were no more to kill. I wonder if I can finally address you in peace, as your thain.’
The resultant cheers were deafening and the crowd chanted her name. Alahan, smiling next to her, took a step to the side and clapped, causing a wry shake of the head from the new thain of Tiergarten. Ingrid joined in, whooping and hollering at the top of her lungs. Wulfrick swept her up in his huge arms and deposited her on his shoulders, giving her a spectacular view of the cheering masses. Somewhere in the distant air, hovering just inside her hearing, the World Raven cawed and Ingrid knew that Brytag was happy.
***
Saara the Mistress of Pain could feel many things. As she stood on her private balcony, she could feel that the matron mother was dead. She could feel that the Jekkan Tyrant of the Fell had been killed. She could feel the hate of the Aberration. And she could feel that Shub-Nillurath had been wounded.
But Saara’s power remained. Something had happened in Oron Kaa, something that left her completely alone but more powerful than she’d ever been. There would be no more Seven Sisters, leaving her to revel alone in the collective power of seven enchantresses. As long as Isabel lived, Saara could enchant anyone she wished with no fear. If she was to rule the Tyranny of the Twisted Tree alone, so be it.
Shub-Nillurath wanted to split the sky and claim his new kingdom, but he had been dealt a blow that weakened his connection to the world. But it was of no moment. Saara had won her most immediate battle and she looked forward to the construction of her tower and the adulation of her subjects.
‘Do you remember me?’ said a sudden voice from the darkness.
She spun away from her balcony’s edge and saw the spectral figure of Kale Glenwood, the door visible through his ghostly form. He was grinning broadly and Saara had no earthly idea how he could be standing there. She looked at the dead forger from Leith for what seemed like hours, letting everything else fall away and feeling pressure rise in her mind.
‘I saw you die,’ she murmured.
The figure slowly flowed into the likeness of Cardinal Mobius. ‘You didn’t see me die,’ said the Purple cleric. Then King Sebastian Tiris. ‘Nor I,’ said the former monarch of Tor Funweir.
Faces came and went, faster and faster. The first few spoke, but the rest quickly melded into a hypnotic dance that made her feel drunk. What was happening? Something beyond her control.
The phantom thralls began to scream, a deafening shard of anguish that pierced the air. She dropped to the floor and held the sides of her head. As a thousand shrieking faces flickered into the air around her, she reached for the door handle with shaking hands. Her senses started and ended with pain. She could feel nothing else. She dragged herself through the door and tumbled down the stone steps. She screamed, but couldn’t hear her own voice. Hand over hand, she crawled on her stomach down the cold steps, panting like an animal as she tried to reach her chamber.
She could no longer feel Shub-Nillurath. The warm sensation of an encircling tentacle was gone, dispelled in an instant as her phantom thralls attacked. She tried to reach out with her mind, but the pain refused to let her. ‘Isabel!’ she murmured, again and again. ‘My sweet sister, what has happened to you?’
The Seductress was dead and Saara’s world appeared to shrink. She felt vulnerable. She felt mortal. Time stretched as she flailed on the stairs. Minutes feeling like hours elapsed before she clasped the door handle and pulled herself into her study, where she lay panting until she mustered enough energy to look up.
The door was just being closed and a lantern pulsed gently on her desk. She could see no people in the darkness, but a shape lay motionless across the desk. It was Elihas of Du Ban. He was face down across the desk with a steady drip of blood pooling on the wooden floor below his neck. His heavy armour, always so much a part of his being, was now a useless shell, making him look like a turtle turned the wrong way up on a beach. His face was locked in an expression of enraged surprise and his neck was sliced deeply from ear to ear.
A blade whistled from the darkness to rest gently against her neck. It was a thin-bladed sword with a subtle curve, but the wielder was hidden in shadow. Saara panted heavily, but had no strength to turn the blade aside, or even to stand up and face her opponent – someone who could raise a sword to a Seven Sister.
‘We’re here to kill you,’ said a sonorous voice from the door. ‘My name is Tyr Nanon.’ A short risen man stepped out of the shadows and cleaned Elihas’s blood from a longsword. ‘I think you know Keisha.’
Saara’s former slave stepped into the light, looming over the enchantress. ‘Hello, mistress. Do you want a fucking massage, you hateful cunt?’
Keisha looked different. She wore leather armour and no make-up. She showed no expression, just dark eyes and a tightly pouting mouth.
Saara howled in pain as her phantom thralls continued their assault. She wanted to reach out with her mind. She wanted to show them that she was a Tyrant of Shub-Nillurath. But the rage of all those enchanted by the Seven Sisters wouldn’t let her. She began to panic. She clamped her hands to the sides of her head and stared up at the dark-blood.
‘This world is broken thanks to you and your dead god,’ said Tyr Nanon. ‘You didn’t win every battle, but you won enough. There is much blood on your hands. All I’ve ever known is this Long War and I know an ending when I see one. This battle ends, another begins.’
She momentarily found her voice. ‘You gain nothing by killing me,’ she wailed, curling up on the floor.
‘You misunderstand, my lady,’ said the Dokkalfar. ‘We’re not trying to gain anything. Killing you does not reverse the damage you have done. Nor does it give back what you have taken, or bring those you’ve killed back to life. The battles are done, the beasts are free, the dead fertilize the soil – this is the end.’
The cold katana blade caressed her throat. ‘Then why?’ cried Saara.
There will be other tales and other legends, but this battle of the Long War is done. Those who survived will be heroes and myths to future generations, and a few, those blessed with long lives, may enter the battlefield again...
For the Long War rumbles on.
AJS
‘Vengeance,’ replied Keisha.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
A.J. Smith’s next book, Tales of the Long War: A Collection of myths and Legends, is coming in October 2016
Find out more
For more information, click the following links
Bestiary
Character Listing
Acknowledgements
About A. J. Smith
About the Chronicles of The Long War
An Invitation from the Publisher
BESTIARY
COMPANION WRITINGS ON BEASTS BOTH FABULOUS & FEARSOME
THE TROLLS OF FJORLAN, THE ICE MEN OF ROWANOCO
History does not record a time when the Ice Men did not prowl the wastes of Fjorlan. A constant hazard to common folk and warrior alike, the trolls are relentless eating machines; never replete, they consume rocks, trees, flesh and bone. A saying amongst the Order of the Hammer suggests that the only things they don’t eat are snow and ice, and that this is out of reverence for their father, the Ice Giant himself
.
Stories from my youth speak of great ballistae, mounted on carts, used to fire thick wooden arrows in defence of settlements. The trolls were confused by bells attached to the arrows and would often wander off rather than attack. Worryingly, there are few records of men killing the Ice Men, and those that do exist speak of wily battle-brothers stampeding them off high cliffs.
In quiet moments, with only a man of the Hammer for company, I wonder if the Ice Men have more of a claim on this land than us.
From ‘Memories from a Hall’ by Alguin Teardrop Larsson,
first thain of Fredericksand
THE GORLAN SPIDERS
Of the beasts that crawl, swim and fly, none are as varied and unpredictable as the great spiders of Nar Gorlan. The northern men of Tor Funweir speak of hunting spiders, the size of large dogs, which carry virulent poisons and view men as just another kind of prey. Even the icy wastes of Fjorlan have trapdoor Gorlan, called ice spiders, which assail travellers and drain the body fluids from them.
However, none of these northerners know of the true eight-legged terror that exists in the world. These are great spiders, known in Karesia as Gorlan Mothers, which can – and indeed do – speak. Not actually evil, they nonetheless possess a keen intelligence and a loathing for all things with two legs.
Beyond the Gloom Gates is a land of web and poison, a land of fang and silence and a land where man should not venture.
From ‘Far Karesia: A Land of Terror’
by Marazon Vekerian, lesser vizier of Rikara
ITHQAS AND AQAS, THE BLIND AND MINDLESS KRAKENS OF THE FJORLAN SEA
It troubles me to write of the Kraken straits, for we have not had an attack for some years now and to do so would be like tempting fate. But I am the lore-master of Kalall’s Deep and it must fall to me.
There are remnants of the Giant age abroad in our world and, to the eyes of this old man, they should be left alone. Not only for the sake of safety, but to remind us all that old stories are more terrifying when drawn into reality.
But I digress. The Giants of the ocean were formless, if legend is to be believed, and travelled with the endless and chaotic waters wherever tide and wind took them.
As a cough in Deep Time, they rose up against the Ice Giants and were vanquished. The greatest of the number – near-gods themselves – had the honour of being felled by the great ice hammer of the Earth Shaker and were sent down to gnaw on rocks and fish at the bottom of the endless seas. The Blind Idiot Gods they were called when men still thought to name such things. But as ages passed and men forgot, they simply became the Krakens, very real and more than enough when seen to drive the bravest man to his knees in terror.
From ‘The Chronicles of the Seas’, vol. IV,
by Father Wessel Ice Fang, lore-master of Kalall’s Deep
THE DARK YOUNG
And it shall be as a priest when awake and it shall be as an altar when torpid, and it shall consume and terrify, and it shall follow none save its father, the Black God of the Forest with a Thousand Young. The priest and the altar. The priest and the altar.
From ‘Ar Kral Desh Jek’
(author unknown)
THE DOKKALFAR
The forest-dwellers of the lands of men are many things. To the Ro, arrogant in their superiority, they are risen men – painted as undead monsters and hunted by crusaders of the Black church. To the Ranen, fascinated by youthful tales of monsters, they are otherworldly and terrifying, a remnant of the Giant age. To the Karesians, proud and inflexible, they are an enemy to be vanquished – warriors with stealth and blade.
But to the Kirin, to those of us who live alongside them, they are beautiful and ancient, deserving of respect and loyalty.
The song of the Dokkalfar travels a great distance in the wild forests of Oslan and more than one Kirin youth has spent hours sitting against a tree merely listening to the mournful songs of their neighbours.
They were here before us and will remain long after we have destroyed ourselves.
From ‘Sights and Sounds of Oslan’
by Vham Dusani, Kirin schola
THE GREAT RACE OF ANCIENT JEKKA
To the east, beyond the plains of Leith, is the ruined land. Men have come to call it the Wastes of Jekka or the Cannibal Lands, for those tribes that dwell there are fond of human flesh.
However, those of us who study such things have discovered disturbing knowledge that paints these beings as more than simple beasts.
In the chronicles of Deep Time – in whatever form they yet exist – this cleric has discovered several references to the Great Race, references that do not speak of cannibalism but of chaos and empires to rival man, built on the bones of vanquished enemies and maintained through sacrifice and bizarre sexual rituals. They were proud, arrogant and utterly amoral, believing completely in their most immediate whims and nothing more.
Whatever the Great Race of Jekka might once have been, they are now a shadow and a myth, bearing no resemblance to the fanged hunters infrequently encountered by man.
From ‘A Treatise on the Unknown’ by Yacob
of Leith, Blue cleric of the One God
THE JEKKAN SERVITORS
The war did not last long. The Great Race of Jekka had no desire for the forests. At length we fought them back to their mountains and threw down their altars.
But their pets had to be defeated. As the masters fled, their servitors covered their retreat. They were terrible, amorphous things of no fixed form, shaping their flesh as their masters ordered.
Fire did not burn them, arrows did not pierce them, blades did not cut them. Only the touch of cold caused them to flee. The mightiest Tyr wielded swords of deep ice and the wisest Vithar conjured snow and freezing winds.
The servitors were defeated, though it cost many lives. In the long ages that followed, whispers remained of the terrifying beasts, that they skulked in Jekkan ruins or guarded long-forgotten lore, but they were never again seen by Dokkalfar.
From ‘The Edda’ Author Unknown but Attributed to the
Sky Riders of the Drow Deeps
VOLK WAR HOUNDS
In ages past, the Volk of the northern ice were bound in an eternal war with their cousins, the Dvergar. They came from the dark lands, scratching like insects across the snow. Generations, beyond the understanding of men, were consumed with bitter conflict until the Dvergar gained the ascendancy.
In their darkest moment, the Volk priests screamed to the sky, asking Rowanoco for aid, and the ice giant sent the white pack.
Great hounds from Sovon-Kor gained intelligence and allowed the Volk to saddle them. They felt no fear and valued loyalty above all. They plunged into battle as a wave of death, annihilating any Dvergar that stood before them.
The white pack bred until there were thousands of war hounds, each one bound to a Volk master from birth to death. But as their masters died, the ageless hounds went forth into the world to do the work of Rowanoco.
From ‘The Ninth Book of Higher Xar’
by Orrin Scarlet Beard of Van Clos
Character Listing
THE PEOPLE OF RO – MEN OF THE STONE AND FOLLOWERS OF THE ONE GOD
Ro Canarn
Lady Bronwyn – duchess of Canarn
Auker of Canarn – guardsman
Ro Haran
Alexander Tiris – the Red Prince of Haran
Gwendolyn of Hunter’s Cross – the Lady of Haran
Ashwyn of Haran – Hawk sergeant
Brennan of the Walls – Hawk major
Lennifer of Triste – serving girl
Symon of Triste – Hawk sergeant
Clerics of the One God
Lanry of Canarn – Brown cleric
Cerro of Darkwald – cardinal of the Brown
Elihas of Du Ban – Black cleric
Daganay of Haran – Blue cleric
Utha the Ghost – former Black cleric and the last Old Blood
Artus of Triste – novitiate of the Blue
KNI
GHTS OF THE ONE GOD
Ohms of the Bridge – former knight sergeant of the Red
Fallon of Leith – the Grey Knight, exemplar of the One God
Malaki Frith – knight general of the Red
Markos of Rayne – White Knight of the Dawn
Lucius of the Falls of Arnon – former Red Knight
Jaxon of Tiris – former Red Knight
William of Verellian – former Red Knight
Nobles
Vladimir Corkoson – lord of the Darkwald
Hallam Pevain – mercenary knight
Dimitri Savostin – major in the Darkwald yeomanry
Yacob Black Guard of Weir – traitor assassin of Ro Weir
Marius Pevain – mercenary knight
Ronan Montague – lord of Du Ban
Common Folk
Randall of Darkwald – squire to Utha the Ghost
Martyn of Tiris – guardsman
Ronan Stone – guardsman
THE PEOPLE OF RANEN – MEN OF THE ICE AND FOLLOWERS OF ROWANOCO
