by Elliott Kay
The captain took the hint. He turned his horse around to face the enemy like the rest of his troops. Chadwalt pulled his sword from its scabbard and raised it to signal his orders to the ranks of bowmen at his side. “Archers, ready! Loose!”
* * *
“Shady Tooth, Teryn,” Scars said as they reached the top of the wall. “We’ve got priorities.”
“I take it things didn’t go well?” asked Teryn.
“Not so much,” said Karana.
“Shit, they’re shooting already,” warned Shady Tooth. They’d only just made it back up the wall, but the enemy had their bows raised.
Others reacted fast, too: “Walls up!” called orcs and hobgoblins along the top of the wall. “Walls up now!”
Everyone at the top scrambled under the cover of goblin folk bearing the largest of the few shields in the camp. With arrows in flight, Scars looked back down the slope of the berm at the defenders massed not far below. Everyone moved fast, ducking behind trees beyond the first line of tents or coming together in clusters at the foot of the berm. The latter seemed foolish to Scars until he saw defenses he did not expect.
Bugbears and burly orcs tugged at ropes tied to the tops of the wooden slab laid across the back of the berm. Strong hands held them in place, tilted back but upright enough to provide a shelter for all beneath. Scars recognized iron handles and mountings still attached to the slab closest to him, smaller than the rest. He remembered Karana’s orders to strip the barn. Now he knew its purpose.
Arrows arced downward, clattering against shields and puncturing through some along the top of the wall, but far more came in just beyond it. The archers were good. Most shots fell just inside the wall, right where they’d intended. None of the archers likely wanted to hit the broad side of a barn, but a great many did.
The wood held firm. A few arrows punched all the way through. Many stopped only an inch or two deep. Others caught at the feathers.
Even with the defenses, a few arrows took their toll. Cries and growls of pain assured of that. At the top of the wall, one orc yelled out a curse to the gods. “Frathek, you alright?” Karana asked from behind a shield.
“It’s only my leg. I’ve got two of them,” the burly orc shouted back.
A second shower of arrows fell between them, bringing out all the same noise: the ping and scrape of metal against metal, the crack of wood, and shouts from the unlucky few. Most still escaped harm.
“Be nice to shoot back,” Shady Tooth growled from behind a pair of shields provided by two hobgoblins.
“Too far to be accurate,” Teryn replied. While Shady Tooth ducked behind the shields, Teryn ducked behind her—or almost beneath her. “It’s a waste of arrows.”
“They’re only giving us more arrows to shoot back at them,” said Karana. “I’ve got a salvage detail organized. They’ll feed our archers fast as soon as this rain stops. They aren’t softening us up as much as they hope.”
“The barrage is also meant to cover the cavalry,” Teryn warned. She risked a peek around the shields as soon as the next hail of arrows ended. “They’re moving now.”
The cavalry started out in good order, with flags and horns scattered across the lines to hold them all together. None of the riders held lances or spears ahead of the mounts to lay anyone low. They had obstacles to cover before the real bloodletting began. Arrows passed over them at a constant flow, thinner now but ceaseless as the archers fired at will. The horses would be at the wall in moments.
“They can’t clear the obstacles. This is crazy,” said Teryn.
Scars watched with gritted teeth. “They’ve got a plan for this,” he seethed.
“So do we,” said Karana. “Watch.”
He risked another look, ducking reflexively when an arrow bounced against the shield over his head. The cavalry kept coming, more than halfway now, but then he saw the first horse tumble and fall with a shriek. Not every horseman behind the fallen managed to get around or jump over in time to avoid the same fate. Others suffered the same, some at the front, more in the back. The cavalry thinned rapidly.
Greater misfortune followed an instant later, explaining every tumble along the way. Goblins burst out of the ground amid the fallen, hidden by clever foliage and the debris of the previous battle. Every abandoned cloak or bloodstained stretch of bare grass turned out to hide a goblin hole, and every goblin held an axe or a dagger. Zana’s red band made her easy to pick out of the mess as she leaped out and jammed her bone dagger in a fallen horseman’s throat. He outweighed and would have likely outclassed her in any other match-up and surely enjoyed far better gear, but it didn’t take much to finish off a foe in the seconds after a fall from a horse.
Riders screamed and their mounts wailed. Goblins finished the riders off in a rush of anger and blood. Every one of them stayed up only long enough to grab a weapon or a shield from their victims before diving back down into their holes.
Scars glanced down to the trench and understood the rest. The goblins he’d seen before were no longer there, but now he saw the tunnels dug into the walls of the trench. This was more than a trap. It was a relay.
“Now they’re close enough,” declared Teryn. She darted out from behind the shields with her bow ready and let an arrow fly in a snap shot. The incoming missiles were still too steady and numerous to stay out to watch her results.
“Good. Archers!” Karana shouted back to her people. “Red markers! Red markers! Shoot!”
Hobgoblins and orcs jumped out from behind their barn-siding shelters with arrows nocked and ready. They shot up and over the wall at generally the same angle, nocked and shot again. The rain of enemy arrows brought down a couple archers, but not many. Defending arrows flew into the rapidly-approaching cavalry to bring further disruption to the charge.
Though shaken and thinned, more horsemen survived the obstacles than not. Despite all that had happened, it wasn’t as if the distance required more than a sprint for the horses.
The trench remained. The wall stood, complete with its spread of sharpened stakes. “What the hell are they planning?” Scars murmured. His eyes searched for an answer and found it amid the oncoming charge.
Brok rode only a few loose ranks back amid the horsemen, his arms out to his sides. Faint tendrils of shadow stretched from his hands to the fallen horsemen back along the field. In another heartbeat, Scars realized the shadows flowed from the victims to his grasp. Brok wasn’t alone, either: Rosile, the woman who’d escaped the same fight, rode near him with the same effect.
The shadows were faint. He only spotted them by virtue of looking for such magic amid the rush, and he found it a moment too late. “The furs! Shoot for the ones in the furs!” Scars called out. He brought up his crossbow around the shield held by the orcs beside him and Karana and aimed. “Teryn, you see? There! Bring them—”
Sharp, forceful pain knocked his arm low. The arrow punched through his hardened leather bracer and his wrist. Most of the shaft stuck out the top, with the bloody head poking all the way through the underside. Another arrow hit harder in his left shoulder. The impact and the sheer pain forced his face into the dirt on top of his weapon.
“Scars!” he heard Teryn shout. It was all he could do to lift his head and look to the enemy.
The forefront of the cavalry were only a breath away from the trench. Near the center of their charge, tentacles of shadow thicker than fir trees lashed up and out from Brok and Rosile’s arms. Their ends split into broad tendrils, each multiplying into more, like huge hands whipping out from the field to the top of the berm.
They landed, clutched at the top, and pulled.
Earth and stone crumbled forward in a sudden rush. Everything under the shadow’s reach fell into the trench. The collapse dug a great gap in the center of the wall. Orcs and hobgoblins at the top shouted as they fell while the goblins in the trench howled in terror under the avalanche.
At the edge of the collapse, Scars felt the mound give way beneath him. The sun
rose in the horizon as he fell into darkness.
Chapter Ten
Burning ice slashed into another tendril of shadow reaching through the masonry cracks. The shot was hardly a challenge. Every such shadow rose into the world from a fixed point in the ground. Yargol’s spell severed the tendril at its base, leaving the rest to dissipate into the air.
The Icefire Dagger spell required about as much of his magical energy as the physical drain of the required throwing gesture. He could do this all morning if necessary. Stronger spells would cause more of a strain. With dual crises at hand, he had to pace himself. He didn’t know if he had the strength for everything.
His greater fear came from the whispers he heard as each tendril arose. “We will keep you safe,” said the last one before he smote it. Now he heard another: “We will make you strong.”
Yargol threw another Icefire Dagger. The shadow vanished, but its companion kept rising. “You will never want for money again.”
He smote that one like the rest. With no more in sight, Yargol turned his eyes back to the runes. There had to be an answer here, or at least an overlooked clue.
“Do I keep smashing or not?” asked DigDig.
“I don’t know,” said Yargol.
“Shadows gotta be coming from something beneath us.”
“Yes.”
“Will it stop if I smash all this?”’
“I don’t know!” Yargol snapped.
“DigDig, let him think,” counseled War Cloud. He stood over the large breach the shovel had cut into the platform, his great sword in one hand at the ready. His eyes didn’t come off the black pit at his feet.
“What are you doing?” DigDig asked.
“Praying.”
DigDig made a face. “That’s gonna help?”
“It’s all I’ve got to work with right now,” War Cloud admitted.
“We have every answer you need,” whispered a voice. Yargol spun, searching for its source. The culprit arose near War Cloud’s feet. Yargol ended it the same way as the others. Only the snap of ice and the scent of smoke drew War Cloud’s attention once it was gone.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Do you hear them?” asked Yargol. “Hear the whispers? You didn’t react.”
“Whispers?” War Cloud wondered. His brow wrinkled with thought. The expression pulled back the fur along his snout, creating a frown. “I’ve heard a hissing sound, but no words. It’s all gibberish at best. You hear words?”
“Yes. Offers.”
“You, too?” asked DigDig. “Thought someone is fucking with us. Nobody wants to make a god out of a goblin. Can’t just give me a girl. Doesn’t work like that.”
“It offered you godhood or a lover?” asked Yargol.
“Yeah, not you?”
“No. Security, wealth, power.”
“If you seek lovers—”
“Shut up!” Yargol interrupted the whisper with another Icefire Dagger, following it with a second out of sheer frustration.
“Don’t like it talking about girls like that, either,” said DigDig. “Disrespectful. And creepy.”
Yargol’s bright, mismatched eyes narrowed. “It’s all so generic. Natural wants. And all phrased so as to fulfill them by the absence of want.”
“Huh?” asked DigDig.
“You no longer hunger if you’re dead,” said Yargol.
“Every answer you seek...” began another whisper, but Yargol blasted the tendril like all the rest. Again, the shadow vanished.
“We might finish this if we destroy the right rune or cut through the right inscriptions,” Yargol explained. He searched feverishly for exactly such a target. “But I can’t tell which one it might be. I cannot read all of these runes, and some of what I can decipher reads like nonsense. Or madness.” He hurled another burning shard. “And I’ve been catastrophically wrong once already.”
“Nah, that’s not a catastrophe. I know that word,” DigDig said proudly. “We’re all still alive. Camp’s still here. Not a catastrophe yet. Now, if this breaks free and eats the sun, that’s probably a catastrophe.”
Yargol let out a frustrated breath. “Thank you, DigDig.”
Horns no longer blared across the camp. Voices beyond the grove quieted as everyone got to the wall or wherever else they were needed. Yargol tried to put it out of his head, looking over an increasingly maddening pattern of runes and glyphs. The added pressure of impending battle countered any benefit from the relative silence.
“The cracks should have severed the gateway,” said Yargol. “The lines are all broken. Runes of power are missing. The gateway shouldn’t work at all...unless it’s not a gateway?”
“What else would it be?” asked War Cloud.
“Perhaps it’s a seal?”
“Then the Devourer is under the ground? Why couldn’t it slip out around the seal?”
“It may have, given what we’ve seen elsewhere,” Yargol considered. “I almost take for granted this is the source of the blight on the farm. But the cult wanted to serve the Devourer, and the Devourer wanted to consume the sun. Why create a seal?”
“Maybe they didn’t want it to eat the sun yet?” DigDig offered. He shrugged when Yargol looked back to him. “Humans kinda need the sun. Maybe they wanted to put off the end of the world ‘til they were done living in it?”
“Possibly. That makes as much sense as anything else.” Yargol turned back, pondering the suggestion. War Cloud still stood watch over the crack left by DigDig’s shovel. “Do you see anything new?” Yargol asked.
“Roiling shadows and nothing else,” said War Cloud. “I sense dark power beneath us. More than I’ve ever faced. But I don’t see anything. Have the probes stopped?”
“Yes. You’re right,” Yargol murmured. No more tendrils emerged from the smaller cracks in the masonry. “If it’s a seal rather than a portal, it’s surely broken now, so...?”
Grey stonework bulged upward around the cracks, causing further crumbling. Chunks of masonry fell off—and vanished instantly, as if falling not into a hole but rather a black liquid just beneath the surface. War Cloud stepped back to catch his balance with his huge blade up and at the ready. A second impact hit the masonry, widening the gap more. A third sent stonework flying back as a single pitch-black tentacle thicker than any tree erupted from the gap.
War Cloud brought his blade against the black form with all he had, the golden glow of his goddess joining with the blood curdling roar of his heritage. The bitter end of the tentacle curled into a thick mass it hurled back downward at him, but he moved faster and had less space to cover.
As before, his sword met physical resistance when it hit the shadow, but not enough to stop him. Steel blessed by Dastia cleaved through the massive tentacle. Golden light spread through the black shadows much like DigDig’s shovel shattered the stone. Rather than falling back into the pit, the inky black fragments crumbled into nothing. By the time the dark fist reached War Cloud, it turned away—and flew off to the edge of the grove.
“That can’t be good,” muttered DigDig.
“We can’t chase it now,” said War Cloud. He turned his attention back to the pit with Yargol. DigDig kept watch as if the shadow might return.
Nothing remained except more roiling shadows below. Even now, they looked thinner. “Light, we need light,” Yargol decided. He drew a glowstone from his pouch and tossed it into the widened crack.
This time, the shadows didn’t swallow everything. Light from the glowstone chased the darkness back, revealing walls of shaped stone in a curve that matched the edges of the platform on the surface. More runes decorated each wall, along with a floor of white marble and bubbling shadows at its center. The edges of the chamber hosted altars, statues, and candelabras.
“The portal is down there,” Yargol realized. “We are standing on a seal. We need to get down there and break all of this.”
“Gonna get dark in there fast. Shadow’s already coming back,” DigDig warned.
“So open it up to more light,” said War Cloud.
A grin flashed across DigDig’s face before it turned to a fierce growl of physical effort. He jammed his shovel into the masonry again, splitting solid stone before heaving it to the side and pitching it away. He moved onto the next stretch of stone without a word. More tangible shadow emerged from sinuous patterns carved into the floor of the chamber, spreading out like black water across the portal.
“Can we dig down outside the edge of the platform and crush it from the sides?” War Cloud asked while DigDig worked.
“That may only broaden the exit. We need to examine and understand before we act,” said Yargol. “I’ll have to work faster than before.”
“We don’t want to stand in the shadow down there, but I can’t stab it from here.”
“No, and the winds of my staff do no good,” said Yargol. “My only other option is draining.” He steeled himself with a deep breath, reached out in a grand gesture with one hand holding his staff and the other empty, and then brought them back together again before making a hurling motion. Flames fell from his open hand, spreading out into a humanoid form in a sudden flash—and an ear-piercing shriek. The image of an elf maiden took form in the blink of an eye and then exploded across the floor of the chamber, burning out the shadows below.
“Olen Zuck’s fire maiden spell? Really?” War Cloud winced.
“It’s what I know,” Yargol confessed.
“You can’t give her some clothes?”
“I don’t know any other way to cast it.”
“Maybe with something covering her ass?”
“Don’t you think I’d prefer that, too? She isn’t real. It’s not like I’m exploiting anyone.”
“It’s still embarrassing. Teryn’s with us. She has elf heritage.”
“I know,” Yargol sighed.
“...do you think you could make a gnoll instead?”
Yargol looked up at him with blinking mismatched eyes. War Cloud shrugged.
“Hey, think this is enough?” grunted DigDig. He leaned on his shovel slightly jabbing against the remaining stonework. Slightly more than half the seal was gone now, allowing the growing light of day to reach in over the lip of the pit.
