The sky was growing brighter. Dawn was less than an hour away.
Forest spirits in all manner of forms were emerging from the forest on all sides, and the ground resounded to the rhythmic step of immense, as yet unseen, creatures of wood and branch drew near.
Mounting Galibor, Calard turned the warhorse and moved into the wood elf battleline, ready to do his part in the coming battle.
‘No,’ said the ebony-haired elven warleader, his face stern.
‘I would fight alongside you and your kin, elf,’ said Calard.
‘No,’ repeated the elf, shaking his head. ‘You are needed elsewhere.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The King-in-the-Wood must be reborn come the first rays of dawn, lest the compact be broken,’ said the veiled lady. ‘We must away.’
‘How?’
‘Over the ice,’ she said.
Calard turned in the saddle to look across the frozen river.
‘Then we all go,’ he said. ‘I will not flee like some craven coward while others fight my battles for me.’
‘No,’ snapped the elven warleader, his eyes hard. ‘It will not hold the weight of us all. Go!’
The white hart was already stepping out onto the frozen lake. The ice groaned beneath its hooves, and cracks began to appear.
‘This is madness,’ said Calard.
The creatures of the dark forest were starting their advance now, and the elves began to launch their first arrows high into the air. Each warrior had loosed three arrows before the first had even struck home, all with unerring accuracy.
‘Head towards the rising sun,’ said the pale warleader. ‘The Oak of Ages is near. Now go!’
Calard glanced along the line of elves. Each of them knew that they would die here, yet they remained stoic and calm, showing no fear. Cold and defiant, their leader flicked his braided black hair over his shoulder, and turned his gaze towards Calard.
‘Go, kegh-mon,’ he said. ‘May Kournos guide you.’
‘Fight well,’ said Calard, before turning Galibor towards the ice. The white hart was standing twenty feet out on the ice, waiting for him.
‘Go!’ snapped the elven leader, ‘Now!’
Calard nodded, and guided Galibor onto the ice. It shifted beneath Galibor’s armoured weight, and Calard swore. The mighty warhorse resisted him, trying to step back onto solid land. With a firm hand, Calard urged Galibor forward, stepping out fully onto the ice, praying that it would hold.
The ice groaned, and he saw deep arcing cracks spreading across its surface. Swearing again, he kicked Galibor forward, racing the reaching cracks. The white hart began to gallop towards the centre of the frozen river, and Calard guided Galibor to follow.
He saw the huge, curved hunting horn drop from Cythaeros’s lifeless fingers, falling onto the ice, unnoticed by the veiled lady. Calard made to ride on, then swore to himself and hauled on his reins, dragging Galibor to a halt.
The sounds of the battle echoed out across the lake but the shore was hidden in mist. Deep cracks in the ice were reaching towards him, as if in pursuit.
Calard slid from the saddle and dropped to the ice, which groaned alarmingly beneath him. Spider-web cracks were already appearing beneath his heels. Stooping, he picked up the hunting horn and swung back into the saddle as larger cracks began to appear.
With a yell, he kicked Gringolet forward, even as the ice began to break up behind him. He raced to catch up with the white stag, the biting wind making his face sting.
The sounds of the battle echoed out across the lake behind them. Calard turned to look back, but the shore was hidden in mist.
The sky ahead of them was steadily lightening with the dawn, and the pair turned their steeds towards the rising sun.
Without knowing exactly why, compelled by some sudden, wild instinct, Calard drew in a deep breath and raised Cythaeros’s curved hunting horn to his lips.
A deafening blast issued forth, the note deeply resonant and sonorous. The sound boomed out across the lake of ice like a shockwave, before bouncing back moments later, reverberating off the distant tree-line and cliffs. Calard’s ears were still ringing when he heard an answering horn in the distance.
Cythaeros stirred, raising his head briefly, golden eyes blinking. He mouthed a few words of elvish, before he slumped forward one more, unconscious.
‘The Wild Riders come,’ said the veiled lady.
‘Wild Riders?’ said Calard.
‘The Untamed,’ said the veiled lady. ‘The Pyremasters. The Hounds of Kournos.’
‘Are they friend or foe?’ said Calard, and even though the wind whipped his words away from him, he was confident that she heard him.
‘Neither, and both. They are dangerous, but they will see us safely on our path.’
‘Where? What path?’
‘The Oak of Ages.’
VIII
Racing the rising sun, Calard leant over the neck of his powerful warhorse, urging her on. She was tired, but galloped hard through the wilderness alongside the majestic white stag.
It had grown steadily colder the nearer they came to the Oak of Ages. Frost had formed upon Calard’s eyebrows and unkempt beard, and he pulled his cloak around his shoulders, shivering. He kicked the ice off his stirrups, and brushed snow from his shoulders.
He could sense that this was an old part of the forest, and he suspected that it had been here long before the birth of the Bretonni, perhaps even before the elves.
Oaks large enough to hold small villages aloft within their branches rose above them, their gnarled limbs thick and heavy.
An icy mist hugged the ground, despite the imminent daylight.
Calard could not have said when the Wild Riders arrived. One moment they had been alone, the next they were surrounded by a great ethereal host of savage, unearthly warriors. It was as if they had materialised from within the mist itself, like wraiths or vengeful phantoms. At first Calard was unsure if they were truly beings of flesh and blood, or merely echoes of warriors long dead. Certainly they were more forest spirit than elf.
Tall and proud, they rode snorting steeds as ferocious and untamed as themselves. Naked from the waist up but for sweeping fur cloaks, they appeared oblivious to the cold. Their torsos and arms were covered in intricate tattoos and war-paint that baffled the eye. The painted designs were in flux, shifting and writhing across their flesh, forming ever more complex patterns and swirling knot-work.
Their flesh was tinged green, and their eyes blazed with fey light and callous savagery. Curving horns like those of young bucks protruded from their temples, revealing their animalistic nature, and they bared their teeth at Calard like wolves. Their mane-like hair was braided and long, filled with sticks and ivy and bones.
They carried spears and swords bound in runes and blood, and scorned the use of saddles and bridles. Skulls and severed heads hung from their belts, and bones and teeth were strung upon necklaces of sinew.
They radiated a ghostly inner light, as if moonlight were trapped within their flesh, and they exuded an untamed fury that threatened to be unleashed at any moment.
In some ways, the power emanating from the otherworldy beings was similar to that he had felt in the presence of the grail knight Reolus, though this power was far less refined, wilder and less unpredictable, and certainly more dangerous.
As if hearing his thoughts, one of the Wild Riders turned and grinned savagely at Calard, white fire flaring in his predatory eyes. He saw the warrior’s muscles twitch, as if he were restraining the urge to lash out. The tattoos upon the warrior’s chest and arms writhed like constricting serpents.
Transfixed by the gaze of the savage rider, Calard found his heart beating faster, and his breath quickening. Images of blood and destruction filled his mind, and he felt a sudden urge to howl at the moon and let his baser instincts overwhelm him.
He wanted to run with the wolves, to join the hunt and hear the plaintive cry of the quarry as it was run do
wn. He wanted to experience the joy that came as the prey was caught and torn apart in a glorious frenzy. He wanted to rip and rend at flesh. He wanted to taste hot blood in his mouth.
Calard blinked and turned away, severing eye contact with the grinning, fierce warrior. Breathing hard, he mouthed a prayer to the Lady and clutched at the fleur-de-lys pendant around his neck. The barbarous creature laughed at his resistance to its savage nature.
Others had joined their ride towards the Oak of Ages. Painted warriors with their hair stiffened into garish spikes ran alongside them, throwing themselves into acrobatic leaps and somersaults to the frenzied beat of drums, and immense warhawks the size of draught horses corkscrewed and dove through the branches overhead. Incredibly, elves were crouched upon the shoulders of these great hunting birds, and Calard marvelled at their preternatural skill and balance to stay mounted as their feathered steeds spiralled through the canopy.
Cloaked archers darted through the shadows, and ranks of elves bedecked in curving, leaf-shaped armour and carrying slender, twin-bladed spears jogged through the snow.
Calard could not guess how many warriors had joined them. For all he knew, the entire forest was marching with them.
If Calard had felt in awe of the Forest of Loren beforehand, that paled in comparison to what he felt as they drew near their final destination. His breath caught in his throat. Surely few men of human birth had ever set eyes upon what he did now.
It was tree of such scale that if defied belief. Every oak, ash and fir he had seen thus far was dwarfed by this arboreal titan, and he was left in no doubt that this was the Oak of Ages, their destination and goal.
A thousand men could have stretched out their arms around the bole of the ancient tree without ever touching fingertips, and he felt certain that had it been somehow transported to the very centre of Couronne its branches would spread from one side of the city to the other. It was larger than any castle in the known world and as high as a mountain, its upper reaches lost in the clouds. Even its lowest branches soared above every other tree in the area, casting them in shadow. Snow was heaped upon its bare branches, and ice encased its ancient gnarled trunk. Slender waystones carved with elegant runes that glowed with fey green light surrounded the immense oak.
Without any doubt, Calard knew that he stood in the presence of one of the oldest and largest living things in the world, and he felt humbled. The air was freezing here, and Calard realised that this was the source of the unnatural winter that had engulfed the forest.
The white hart came to a halt, and Calard and the savage wild riders fell in behind it. An expectant hush descended.
A mighty arch was set into the bole of the gargantuan grandfather oak, a shadowed gateway large enough for fifty knights to ride through side by side with room to spare. Icicles hung from the arch like the teeth of a dragon, ready to clamp down on any who dared pass beneath. Mist rolled out from this darkened entrance into the tree’s secret depths.
Calard felt a strange tingling sensation across his flesh as he gazed upon the yawning archway. It prickled at his skin, and he tasted an acidic, metallic tang upon his tongue.
‘Sorcery,’ he muttered, drawing his sword.
The Wild Riders evidently felt these magicks at work as well, for they snarled and bared their teeth, brandishing weapons. Their horses stamped their hooves and tossed their heads in agitation, manes thrashing from side to side.
The knotted bark and gnarled wood of the Oak of Ages began to shift and warp, frozen branches contorting and twisting as if the tree were in silent agony. Ice cracked and fell from its flanks in great sheets, and snow tumbled from immense branches. An angry murmur rippled through the elven ranks.
The ground trembled, and roots as thick as tree-trunks burst from the ground in front of the white stag, throwing up a wave of snow and sodden earth, forcing it back. The roots of the Oak of Ages rose into the air, coiling and twining together into one thick, rope-like stem. It climbed twenty, thirty, forty feet straight upwards, and its tip bulged like a rapidly growing rose-bud the size of a small house. The petals of this bulging bud curled back, revealing a single figure. Icy fog spilled around it, falling towards the ground like a waterfall. It was a creature at once alluringly feminine and horrifying in aspect.
‘Drycha,’ spat one of the Wild Riders, and the name was repeated a hundred times around the glade, spoken with hatred and venom.
An ancient creature of malice and bile, she nevertheless had the body of a goddess. Her naked flesh was silvery-green and thick hair of tangled roots and dead leaves coiled down her back, writhing like a nest of vipers. Her slender arms became elongated branches at the elbows, and her hands were blade-like talons, each the length of a short sword.
Her inhuman features were exquisitely beautiful, yet disturbing. Her eyes were large and sharply elongated, and they shone with green light and murder.
The roots of the Oak of Ages coiled around her legs, twisting around her calves and thighs, encircling her slender waist. The roots retracted, and Drycha was lowered to the ground. She came to rest before the arched entrance into the frozen heart of the Oak of Ages, and the roots disappeared beneath the earth.
She regarded the white stag and the warriors arrayed against her with undisguised disdain. Her luscious green-tinged lips curled in a sneer.
‘Begone, elvenfools,’ the malicious forest spirit hissed, the words spiralling around in Calard’s mind. ‘Athel Loren no longer welcomes your presence.’
Her whispering, insidious voice made a chill ripple down Calard’s spine. It was the sibilant voice of a serpent, filled with bitterness and poison. Her words were spoken in the lilting, musical tongue of the elves, yet he found he could understand them.
‘The King-in-the-Wood is ash and dust, and his consort-queen lies sleeping, locked in winter’s embrace,’ continued Drycha. ‘Too long have those of elvenkind kept the forest imprisoned, and it rages to be free. Come the first rays of dawn, it will be.’
Calard could feel the mounting fury of the Wild Riders, a rising anger that threatened to erupt at any moment.
Alone, the veiled lady seemed unaffected. She slid from the back of the majestic white hart, and began to walk out to meet Drycha. The malign forest spirit regarded her with hatred, her talons flexing and her tangle of hair writhing.
‘Stand aside, Drycha of the deep forest,’ said the veiled lady, coming to a halt twenty feet away from the branchwraith. ‘The Equerries of Kurnous have come, as they have on the eve of the vernal equinox since the Winter of Woe, so long past. They bring with them He-Who-Would-Be-King, the Morningstar, and you have no right to bar their progress. There is still time for the offering to be made, and for the forest to be appeased.’
‘You are not of this place, mortal being,’ hissed Drycha. ‘You have no authority here, no right to speak or act. Dawn approaches. The offering is too late.’
As she spoke, Drycha began to walk backwards, hips swaying. She allowed her war-aspect to come upon her, and her face twisted into that of a murderous hag, her features becoming cracked and wooden and sharp, matching the vile darkness of her soul.
She stepped back into the shadow of the archway of the Oak of Ages, her glowing green eyes shining in the gloom.
‘The dawn rises, red and bloody, and the compact remains unfulfilled,’ Drycha hissed. ‘The time of the Asrai is over.’
She raised her hands into the air, and an icy tempest billowed around her. She stretched her splayed talons towards the elves, and a storm of ice and frost blasted across the glade to engulf the veiled lady and the elven war-host arrayed behind her. Calard cried out as the veiled lady disappeared in the tempest. The temperature plummeted, and he was forced to shield his face as the howling blizzard crashed over him.
Elves were sent sprawling, their cries ripped away by the gale and their faces sliced by ice. Horses reared in panic and many lost their footing as the tornado raged around them, blinding and deafening.
As abruptly as it ha
d come, the wind died away, and Calard saw the veiled lady still standing, untouched in the centre of the glade. Of Drycha, there was no sign, but he became aware of thousands of pairs of eyes twinkling in the shadow behind the Oak of Ages.
The darkened forest came alive, rippling with movement. A host from the deepest wildwoods came forth, a bewildering array of creatures united by hatred.
Flocks of crows took roost within the branches of the Oak of Ages, cawing and bickering, the red-caps perched upon their feathered backs waving tiny spears and bows.
Dryads emerged from the gloom to take up position before the great tree, their claws twitching in eagerness, eyes flashing. Some were ready for war, their features twisted into horrific masks of deadwood and briar, while others appeared as elven nymphs, their skin tinged green, their bodies youthful and deceiving.
Behind them came behemoths of wood and bracken, hulking monsters infused with the life-force of malevolent forest spirits. Some resembled uprooted husks of dead trees, while others appeared as little more than sodden piles of rotting wood and fallen branches crudely pulled together to form a vaguely humanoid form. Most were more than eight feet tall, while some were closer to twenty. Ivy and lichen clung to them, and many had ferns and brightly coloured fungus growing from their hunched backs. Crude parodies of men, they lumbered forward to smash and destroy, driven on by Drycha’s hatred.
Clouds of shimmering sprites flitted between the boughs, hissing and spitting as they brandished tiny weapons, glittering wings beating fast. Others rode owls, weasels or large, powdery-winged moths while some merely swarmed across the snow, leaping and cavorting between the legs of their larger kin. Glowing will-o’-the-wisps bobbed and weaved through the air, and tiny beings that seemed to be made of nothing more than leaf and thorn stomped forward, black eyes glittering with the promise of violence. Spider-like beasts of bramble and sticks crept through the branches overhead, sap-like venom dripping from clicking mandibles. White-furred wolves slunk through the shadows, snarling and baring their teeth.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 86
