Rowen marveled at the sergeant’s loyalty to his commander. He wondered for a moment if there was more to it than that, but Briel cast a cold look at Silwren. “They’ll be watching you closer than ever—especially you, wytch. Keep your hands in sight. Work no magic, if you value your life.”
Silwren nodded coolly. “I am not your enemy. Take us to the capital. We’ll do the rest.”
Briel raised one eyebrow. “Perhaps.” He mounted his horse again. When they started out, the Sylvan swordsmen formed a tight circle around them, their blades flashing blood red in the light of sunrise.
CHAPTER THIRTY
DOOMSAYER’S HOUR
Doomsayer watched sunlight spread across the Ash’bana Plains and imagined it was a great bloodstain. The thought aroused him. Though he had no Sylvan captive to rape, he tipped his head back and howled. Then he tossed his head so that the animal skulls braided through his tangled dark locks shook about his bony gray face, and he thrust his great blackened sword into the sky.
The last Sylvan stronghold smoldered in the distance. Though his forces had been unable to press all the way to the Wytchforest during their earlier attack, the enemy had suffered greatly. The next time, his forces rolled over the last two Sylvan strongholds with ease. Now the Olgrym stood poised, at last, to strike at the very heart of the Sylvan nation.
Doomsayer howled again. The howl was echoed again and again by those behind him—scores, hundreds, even thousands. Tribe after tribe. The Skullshards, the Ash-Hands, the Felmauls. Dozens more, all united as never before. United under him.
Even as he had the thought, as though to mock him, a rider moved ahead of the Olgish host. Slight, cloaked, and shorter even on horseback, the man did not reek of fear.
“Shade.” Doomsayer grimaced as he spoke the name. “You come to watch blood spill or spill some yourself?”
The Shel’ai’s bloodmare balked at the smell of Olgrym, but the sorcerer controlled it and answered the Olg with a cold gaze of his own. “Guard your tongue, Olg. I come to command you.”
Doomsayer laughed. “You talk like this in front of my tribe?” He waved his blackened sword that was easily as long as the Shel’ai was tall. “Maybe I cleave you in half for that.”
Shade’s violet eyes and bone-white pupils stared back, unflinching. The sorcerer smirked. Violet flames flickered to life, coursing the length of one arm while the other held the reins of the bloodmare. Doomsayer’s pulse quickened. Despite the number of times he’d seen it lately, wytchfire still fascinated him.
“Maybe I burn you to cinders in front of your tribe. Maybe you die without tasting Sylvan blood. Is that what you want?”
Doomsayer’s grin faded. “You kill me, they cut you to pieces. Your big general’s too far away to help you.” He pointed to a distant hill, where Fadarah sat astride his own bloodmare. Doomsayer hoped Shade would look in the direction he pointed. All he needed was for the sorcerer to turn, and he would cut him in half.
But Shade held Doomsayer’s gaze, unblinking. The crimson greatwolves sewn into the sorcerer’s white cloak stirred, rustling despite the dead-calm air.
Finally, Doomsayer laughed again. “You are lucky only I know your tongue, little man. If my warriors knew how you’d insulted me, one or both of us would have to die now.” The Olg chieftain turned southward again. “Your fire, our muscle. By tonight, your whole army will be dead or thrown back. Olgrym will reach the big trees. We cut them with our axes. No swords, no bows will stop us.”
The sorcerer winced. Is that fear I smell? Then it was gone.
“The Sylvs aren’t my army.” Shade’s fists coursed with wytchfire. “You are my army.” He nodded at the ranks upon ranks of Olgrym seething behind them. “They”—he nodded at the Sylvan legions in the distance—“are my enemies.”
But you look like them. Doomsayer decided that did not matter. In moments, Sylvan men would feel his blade splitting them in half. By that night, Sylvan women would feel the same.
He waved his sword and howled again, calling to the tribes in the Olgish tongue. He told them of the glories awaiting them and of the lusts and dreams of conquests passed down by countless generations, finally set to be fulfilled. The Olgrym howled in reply, their frenzy growing by the second. Some of them began slashing their own bodies. Others set themselves on fire. When Doomsayer was sure the sound of their howling had carried across the grasslands and shaken the Sylvan legions so that the reek of their fear wafted like perfume off their paltry fortifications, he glanced at Shade.
The sorcerer nodded his approval.
Doomsayer gave the order. The Olgrym charged.
On a hill a half mile from the Olgrym’s army, Fadarah fought back tears. Forgive me, Kith’el. I should be the one leading the Olgrym. But that, he knew, was impossible. Given the brutality of their culture, the names of dead chieftains tattooed to Fadarah’s face—those he’d killed to avenge his mother—might actually earn the Olgrym’s respect. But the thought of being near those creatures filled him with such loathing that he knew he could not directly command them himself.
For all I know, Doomsayer could be my father. The thought brought a sardonic smile to his face. That would certainly add further poignancy to the moment when Fadarah finally killed him. But that moment would have to wait. So he kept his distance and watched.
Nearly all of the Shel’ai were with him. Only the children had been left behind at their remote, northern stronghold of Coldhaven, along with a few trusted sorcerers to safeguard them.
We have too many enemies. It was good, at least, that a great many of those enemies were set to be culled from the list. He glanced at the other Shel’ai as they encircled him protectively, mounted on bloodmares. He did not have to read their minds to guess what they were thinking.
They had come to lend their strength and sorcery to the battle. None relished the thought of aiding Olgrym any more than Fadarah did, but they dared not wait for the Dhargots’ help, if doing so would mean Doomsayer’s defeat and the loss of an opportunity to breach the Sylvan realm. He took a moment to ponder the breakneck campaign of the past few weeks. To the north lay Brai-yl Run, the Ash’bana Plains, a smattering of Wyldkin villages, and all the strongholds of the Shal’tiar. All were gone.
Their hour of triumph had arrived, the culmination of a campaign he had devised with El’rash’lin so many years before. They would vindicate so much sacrifice and loss. Yet the thought brought him no joy.
Memories of his encounter with Silwren, just days before, returned to him. Fearing Shade might encounter her during the attack, Fadarah told himself that he’d followed in order to ensure the safety of his second-in-command. He knew the truth, though: he needed to see Silwren, to try to persuade her one last time to join them. But her actions made it clear that she was as unreachable as she was fainthearted.
But she’d done enough. In teleporting him and Shade miles away, precisely when they were needed most, she’d helped stall an attack that would have surely seen all the Shal’tiar strongholds destroyed in a single night. Since then, though, she’d been absent from the battlefield. And as a result, the remaining Sylvs north of the forest had been decimated with ease.
Fadarah fixed his gaze on the dark tide of muscle and murder closing on the Sylvan lines. As much as Olgrym feared and worshipped magic, he had to admit that the alliance of the Olgish tribes was entirely Doomsayer’s doing. And the Olgrym appeared only too willing to charge what remained of the Sylvan legions: a smattering of palisades and trenches dug hastily in front of the towering trees, crowded with exhausted, bloodied archers and swordsmen.
Within moments, a thousand Sylvan longbows would answer the Olgrym’s howling with a deadly song of their own. Dozens of Olgrym would fall, their gigantic bodies feathered head to toe with arrows. Maybe a thousand Olgrym would die before the rest reached the trees.
But reach them they would. Fadarah closed his eyes, willing away the tears. No other way.
Opening his eyes, he imagined what would f
ollow: the Sylvan legions falling back, drawing the Olgrym after them. The Olgrym advancing, reckless and crazed, certain of their victory. They did not even bother to look up at the countless platforms yoked to the wytchwood trees, swarming with archers. Sylvan longbows blurred, making a sound like music, forcing the Olgrym to pay in blood for their every step into the sacred land.
But that also brought him no joy. By sundown, the culmination of the first day of wholesale slaughter, the flower of the Sylvan army would be dead. Still, the Olgrym would have their foothold. For the first time in centuries, the Wytchforest would be breached—and there would not be enough Sylvs left to drive out the intruders.
They will slaughter each other by the thousands. Whatever Sylvs and Olgrym remain can be driven off by magic, or with the Dhargots’ help, if necessary. And when it’s done, Sylvos will be ours. We will finally have a home.
The first screams of battle reached his ears. He saw the morning sky darken with Sylvan arrows, watched the first trickle of what he knew would be a deluge of Sylvan and Olgish blood. Enemies. Both are our enemies. But before he could stop himself, he thought of his mother. He hardly remembered her, but she had cared for him. The others had killed her and driven him out. If she—a Wyldkin, a Sylvan woman forced to bear the child of her husband’s killers—could love that child, even when it stared up at her with violet eyes stained by magic…
She had loved him, but her own people killed her for it. She was the exception that proved the rule. And his story was not so different from that of all the other Shel’ai he had saved—who had, in turn, saved him. Fadarah tightened his jaw. Let them burn. Let them all burn.
He straightened in the saddle and drew his sword, willing wytchfire to wash the length of its blade. Then he signaled a charge of his own.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ARRIVALS
Rowen recalled a fable that constituted one of the few memories he had of his mother. It said that it would take a hundred men, linked arm in arm, to encircle the World Tree. But when they finally reined in at the base of the tree, he realized that multiplied by a factor of ten, that figure would still have come up short. Sundown splashed off the World Tree’s white bark, which, unlike the gnarled wytchwoods, was silky smooth.
Before him lay Shaffrilon, the Sylvan capital. Though Silwren had described it a little, basing her descriptions on what she had heard from her kin, part of him had still anticipated a city similar to Lyos, crowded and sprawling. Instead, the capital appeared to be six different cities, and he presumed an equal number of cities existed on the other side of the trunk, each one built upon a massive platform affixed to the side of the World Tree. The platforms spiraled up the great trunk, all joined by a broad white walkway that rose higher than his eye could follow. People, looking no bigger than ants, moved along the platforms and walkways.
The base of the walkway hosted a broad, high wall of white stone, easily as large as the walls of Lyos, lined with battlements and archers. Though he was still fifty yards from the gates, Rowen saw ornate carvings of twisting tree limbs reaching toward a sky full of stars.
“The World Gate,” Briel said.
Rowen wondered what would happen next. They’d ridden all day without food or rest, but his weariness evaporated at the thought of finally arriving at his destination. He glanced down at his attire. He smoothed his tabard and wiped at his armor, wishing he’d thought to polish it. Then a trumpet sounded. The World Gate opened. Riders dressed in green silk and armed with spears rode out to meet them.
Briel, along with some of the Sylvan swordsmen who had quietly escorted them all day, rode ahead to speak with the riders. The conversation devolved into shouting almost immediately. Rowen tensed, resisting the impulse to turn Snowdark and ride away. He eyed the Sylvan archers and swordsmen still massed around them, gauging his odds of successfully disarming one before the rest killed him.
“Stay calm, Knight. I told you, I’ll keep you safe.”
Rowen nodded, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Briel. The Shal’tiar sergeant rode back a moment later. The riders who had emerged from the World Gate came with him, their fine raiment rippling in the faint breeze.
Briel cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Knight, but you’re both being arrested. They’re taking you to the House of Questions. I’ll accompany you to see that you are not harmed. I advise you not to resist.”
Before Rowen could answer, Sylvan hands grabbed him, unceremoniously hauling him down from the saddle. Someone put a bag over his head. Snowdark whinnied, but Silwren made no cry of protest. It took all his willpower not to scream or fight as rough hands dragged him back onto his feet, tied his hands, and dragged him forward like an unruly slave.
Brahasti reined in and grimaced when he saw the place. Far from the luxurious Dhargothi villa he had been promised, his new home more closely resembled a small winery that had lost its crops to drought and its owner to revolting peasants. The atrium was scattered with trash, including the wreckage of stone columns and the remnants of a ruined garden wreathed in diseased poplars.
He cursed. Judging from their reek, the stables had not been mucked in weeks. Still, the stone structures encircling the villa were mostly intact, and the wooden ones could be repaired. The fortifications would need to be improved as well. Brahasti was not as interested in keeping intruders out, though, as he was in keeping prisoners inside.
The trick will be making this place effective without making it look too much like a prison camp. Though the area was remote, with no cities or villages within a day’s ride in any direction, he had his own aesthetics to consider. Luckily, Brahasti’s talents applied to more than battlefield strategy, albeit with less pleasure. But he reminded himself that the end result would be pleasurable indeed. And profitable.
He turned to face the sellsword captain. “We must make this place livable as soon as possible. The first prisoners will be arriving any day now.” He dismounted.
The captain, an unshaven and generally brutish northlander named Dagath, followed suit. He narrowed his eyes—his one good eye, at least. He wore a patch over the other. Brahasti guessed his reluctance had more to do with being so far from the front, faced with the prospect of grueling manual labor rather than battle.
Wait. Just wait.
As his train of servants, horses, wagons, and sellswords filtered into the villa, Brahasti toured the grounds with Dagath. Pinching his nose, he first ordered the stables cleared. Half of Dagath’s sellswords were put on repair duty, to mend shutters and wooden walls and clear stones in anticipation of the stone masons’ arrival in a day or two. The rest of the men were tasked with digging a trench, four feet deep and four feet wide, all around the villa. The makeshift moat would be filled with caltrops. The only way to avoid the fiendish spikes would be a single wooden bridge, which would be overseen by a guardhouse at one end and a wooden tower at the other.
Dagath adjusted his eyepatch, reminding Brahasti that until recently, the sellsword had preferred leaving the empty socket visible to everyone. Though Brahasti found that amusing, it was unappetizing. So he’d ordered him to cover it.
“And who the hell’s going to build that?”
Brahasti smirked. In another time and place, he might have had the captain executed for that kind of insolence. However, Dagath’s demeanor was well suited to Brahasti’s ultimate ambitions. Ignoring the question, he said, “Both the tower and the guardhouse will be manned day and night. I want the men armed with spears and crossbows, in addition to whatever else they fancy. Also, I want two gates—one at each end of the bridge.”
Dagath scratched a ghastly knife scar running the length of his cheek. “Begging your pardon, milord, but how long will we be staying here?”
“A long time. Years, unless I find someplace better.”
Brahasti knew Prince Karhaati would not object to his absence; he despised Brahasti as much as he wanted to pretend the campaign did not need him. Of course, Fadarah would expect Brahasti to ride back to the front
once the snows melted, but a lot could happen in so many months. Fadarah might die. Fortunes could change. Brahasti had no real desire to reign in the Free Cities pinched between Ivairia and the Lotus Isles. They were stubborn lands, and no matter how firmly or frightfully the Dhargots ruled, there would always be rebellions. As far as Brahasti was concerned, he had everything he wanted right before him—or he would, soon enough.
Dagath hesitated, and Brahasti imagined the uncouth man was trying to decide how far to press the matter. He concealed his amusement and waited for the question.
“Milord… is all this necessary? We’re well in Dhargoth, good three days from the Simurgh Plains—even if the Free Cities were still free, which they ain’t.”
“Your point, Captain?”
“Well, kind of seems like we’re prepping for a siege. Seems a bit odd for a country house is all.”
Brahasti still had not decided how much to tell the captain. Of course, the mercenaries already knew that Brahasti would be keeping Sylvan prisoners there. The duty probably already seemed tedious, and Dagath’s sellswords weren’t exactly known for their temperance and reliability. Even though they were well inside the new boundaries of the empire, Brahasti had few friends there and no actual Dhargothi warriors to protect him. Unless he wanted to risk his sellswords’ disobedience, perhaps even an outright rebellion like the one that had befallen this villa’s previous owner, it might behoove him to hint at the future pleasures that came with Dagath’s new post.
“Not a siege. More like… an orphanage.” He enjoyed the bemused look on the sellsword’s face. “Of course, in addition to children, there will be a great many Sylvan women coming here. I expect them to stay here. Beyond that, so long as you and your men obey my every command, I will leave these women to your… discretions.”
Knightswrath (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 2) Page 30
