Blood Rain

by Helix Parker

  Edgar pulled out the small dagger he had tucked away in his waistband and sprinted over to the melee. He jumped as high as he could and stuck the dagger into the shepherd’s back. The shepherd shrieked and threw him off, but the damage had been done. The shepherd backed away, stumbling as he tried to pull at the blade sticking out of his back. He sprinted away shouting obscenities, his arms flailing for the knife in his flesh.

  “Who was that?” Edgar asked, panting.

  “An old friend.” Leon spat some blood onto the ground.

  Naspen came over and tended to Leon’s wounds. She rubbed some kind of leaf over them then wrapped cloth around them. She poured water over the cloth, and it seemed to harden.

  When Leon’s bleeding had stopped, they mounted the horses and began riding again as if nothing had happened. Edgar waited for Leon to say something about the incident, but he had once again fallen silent.

  “Leon?”

  “Yes.”

  “You couldn’t defeat a shepherd in armed combat.”

  “What of it?”

  “So how do you suppose you can defeat the Khan of the Marauders?”

  Leon shook his head. “I don’t plan on fighting him blade to blade.”

  Edgar glanced back at Naspen, who was watching Leon intently. “You’re not ready for this,” Edgar said.

  “I’m ready.”

  Edgar thought a moment. “Keep the land.”

  “What?” Leon asked, stopping his horse.

  Edgar pulled on his reins. “Keep the land. Go home to your family, Leon. This is not your fight.”

  Leon looked at Naspen then back to Edgar. “You’ve hired me to complete a task, and I have yet to complete it.”

  “I know. But I don’t want you to complete it. I want you to go home. Go to Cassandra and kiss her. Hug your children. Forget about this.”

  Leon looked hopeful, yet worried. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. I’m certain.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  Leon turned his horse around. “Thank you.”

  Edgar watched as Leon rode away, nodding once to Naspen.

  35

  That night, Edgar drank little as he sat by the fire in a dilapidated roadside inn. The chair was thickly cushioned, and few people were around. He listened to the crackle of the fire as wolves howled outside in the darkness.

  Outside the window were forests with mangled, leafless trees, the final forests before the Valley of Dolane, and then the city and the sea beyond. He had come so close.

  Too close to give up.

  What was Erebos but a man? A powerful man at the head of a powerful army, but just a man. And like a man, he would bleed, and he would die.

  The witch appeared and sat next to him. He hadn’t noticed how she’d come into the room.

  “Will you go back to your mountain?” he asked.

  “Do you intend to kill Erebos?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will stay with you.”

  “Why?”

  “I know Erebos in a way few others do. He is a darkness, a rip in life that lives. He devours life wherever he goes. If there is even a chance to defeat him, I must take it.”

  He took a sip of his ale and placed the mug down on a side table. “And how exactly do you know him?”

  “We were both apprenticed to the same master for a long time. Erebos eventually betrayed our master and became a master himself. He now only worships the underworld, where souls are tormented for their transgressions.”

  He scoffed. “You sound like Leon. I figured with your education in natural philosophy maybe such silly notions would have been pushed out of your mind.”

  “And why are they silly? Because you don’t believe them?”

  “They just are,” he said, not in the mood to argue. “We need a new champion, it seems. But no one will fight.”

  “We don’t need a champion. We only need a moment. Just one, where Erebos is caught unaware and by himself. We will have such a moment after the city is taken.”

  “Why does he travel separately from his army?”

  “His loneliness gives him hatred, which gives him strength. He does not think in the same manner as you or I, avoiding pain and seeking comfort or pleasure. He seeks the pain and avoids the pleasure. The pain is what keeps him strong. And when he arrives at Dolane after the city has fallen, he will have a moment of victory and, possibly, be distracted.”

  Edgar smirked. “Distracted enough for an old witch and a dwarf to kill him?”

  “There are many aspects to him that are not human, but he is just a man. If you were to slip your dagger into his back, he would perish as any man would.” The fire was dying. She lifted her fingers toward it, and the flames grew again. “I can defeat him, perhaps. If he is preoccupied and alone.”

  “Then we ride on, it seems.”

  “So it does.” She rose and crossed the room to go to her night chamber.

  “How do you know Leon?”

  She smiled. “You should probably ask him that.”

  36

  Sorcery had officially been banned in the kingdom a millennia ago and had become the purview of children telling stories to scare one another. But a few of the wiser lords and ladies knew outlawing something only attested to its potency. They decided there must be something to magik if the royal family would go to such lengths to get rid of it. And so the underground study of magik by amateurs began.

  One of the amateurs was a young apothecary by the name of Cabbott Simon. He began his work in the arcane simply enough by scouring ancient texts for cures to various ailments. In a library in the ancient city of Reposh Lule, he discovered a tome in a steel casing. Curious as to why a book would require a steel casing, he purchased it from the shopkeeper and took it home to his little cottage near a stream close to the city of Turin.

  And there, he discovered that the world did not work even close to how he believed it did.

  Things ancient and terrifying existed simultaneously with the sublime, the mundane placed between them. He saw things that year that changed him. Flames spoke to him of the time of darkness before the light came. He conversed with demons that described the agonies of the underworld. And he spoke to the dead.

  He learned of the Tear of Chedes, a crystallized tear of the god himself, or so the texts said. Chedes had wept only once in his existence—when his daughter was taken from him.

  His daughter fell in love with Rain, the god of death and Chedes’s brother. She no longer wished to live in the underworld. Her father forbade their union. The gods were immortal and did not fear death, but his daughter was only half immortal. Her mother was a beautiful woman from the Isle of Sense. The mother had grown old and died, as all mortals were prone to do, and Chedes had been inconsolable. His daughter was all he had left of his wife. Alone in the darkness, he had nothing else.

  Disobeying her father, she escaped the underworld with Rain’s help. Chedes wept when he discovered her gone, and his tears turned to crystals.

  Having left the underworld, the lovers chose to enter mortal bodies and live among the people. But that meant they were subject to all the sorrows of men: sickness, aging, and death. In mortal bodies, they died. And when they passed back to the realm of the dead and gods, they had to wait a thousand years. That was the bargain struck with Chedes. Rain could have his daughter for one mortal lifetime every millennium. Otherwise, war would be waged between them for eternity.

  Cabbott had found it a lovely story, but he was more interested in the crystalline tears. He didn’t believe the hogwash of eternal love and gods, but he did think that such stories held truths. Probably some ancient shaman had discovered the crystal’s power and concocted such a tale to explain it.

  Cabbott thought of that shaman as he stood in his laboratory staring at the Tear of Chedes. The crimson glow created shadows on the stone walls. His laboratory had no windows, and the only entrance point was a set o
f stairs on the other side of the room. He had constructed the place well underneath the palace when he had moved there as the king’s advisor. No one else knew about it but his two assistants.

  He tried spells at first, but of course, they didn’t work; they never did. Then he tried various salves and potions from the ancient tomes. The crystal did nothing. Pacing the room in his soft slippers, Cabbott wished he had something to break, but everything down there was precious. He was not a man given to temper, but as a last resort, he lifted a broadsword—awkwardly, since he’d never held one—and chopped at the crystal as if it were a block of wood. The blade broke.

  He collapsed against a wall. He had gone without sleep for three nights, and as far as he could recall, only one meal had been brought down to him in that time. Warm water was in a keg in the corner, and he would take a few sips each day. The king had asked where he was, and he sent word that he was feeling ill. That would buy him one, perhaps two more days but no more.

  The crystal gleamed in the darkness, mocking him, holding the secrets of its power from him. The crystal was braced between two stones to hold it in place. Staring at it, he thought the interior, the way it moved and folded and spread, appeared much like blood.

  His eyes widened. He ran to the stairs and called up for one of the assistants. A young man of sixteen came tramping down the stairs. Cabbott had forced him to sit by the door the entirety of the three days in case he required anything.

  “Yes, m’lord?”

  “Come here, boy.” He took the boy by the arm and led him over to the crystal.

  Pulling up the boy’s sleeve, Cabbott retrieved a piece of the broken broadsword and sliced the boy’s arm. The boy cried and attempted to pull away, but Cabbott held his arm still as the blood dripped down over the stone.

  Immediately, the stone began to glow fiercely, and a golden light emanated from its edges.

  “Oh my,” he said, letting the boy go. “Now that is interesting.”

  37

  The horns bellowed throughout the city at night, and almost instantaneously screams reverberated off the walls as people dashed about to find family members. The protocols were that all citizens were to lock themselves behind closed doors, though they had never been practiced and weren’t widely known. Who in their right mind, after all, would attack a city of a million people?

  But as Estra sat on the stone steps of the forum, the city was under attack. He dashed to the side of the forum, up to the gates on the side door then to the gold decorations on the roof. He swung his legs up like a spider then spun around and sprinted off the roof, catching the edge of the next building with only his fingers. He pulled himself up and dashed from roof to roof until he came to the rounded arched windows of the keep, the tallest structure in the city. He climbed the windows and buttresses until he came to the flat roof. Sweating and panting, he looked out over the city walls.

  A swarm of black figures encircled the city. Some were thicker in patches, and in other places, there were none, but it appeared as if the entire world had donned black and marched before Dolane.

  The army of black was moving, and behind him, the Dolanian army was preparing to go through a side gate. The armies of Dolane greatly outnumbered the army in black, even without all of their soldiers prepared. Estra watched as legions joined legions then lined up in formation to leave the city.

  But the army of black was at the side entrance. In fact, their heaviest forces were there with the most numbers and the largest horses. Estra held his breath as the gates slowly began to go down. Why were the Dolanian armies attacking? The city had enough provisions for a year and could always get more from the sea. Bravado of the generals, perhaps.

  The gate opened, and the Dolanians came out in formation with an emissary at its head. Behind the emissary was the general. The custom was that the two emissaries would prepare each side for the negotiation ahead, then the generals would ride out gallantly and meet on the field of battle. Much of the time, or so people said, battles were unnecessary and usually avoided with a few simple payments or the return of land that the opposing side felt had been taken unjustly.

  But the army in black swarmed the emissary, cut off his head, and stuck it on a spear. They threw the spear with such ferocity that it impaled the general on the horse that was standing behind him.

  Then, they attacked.

  The Dolanians held the line and pushed forward, but the army of black did not care about lines or even losing ground. They would frequently retreat before circling back to strike only to retreat again. They were unpredictable, like a swarm of bees. And Estra began to think the whole thing would not end well.

  Suddenly, the black army closed in around the legions like a fist. The Dolanians were attempting to push out of the city, but as they went through the gate, the army in black cut them down like pigs. The legions were not ready for that type of battle, and the archers on the parapets could only fire arrows away from the walls, fearful of hitting their own soldiers.

  Within hours, the corpses were piled in heaps. The dead didn’t just consist of the Dolanians. The army in black sacrificed many to keep the entire army within the city walls. Estra guessed they lost one man to every ten Dolanians.

  Suddenly, though he had never seen a battle or been trained in war, Estra saw what they were doing. The corpses were narrowing the opening. The legions attempting to come out behind their brethren had a smaller and smaller exit passage, one where the army in black waited for them on the other side.

  The city below him appeared abandoned. The shops were closed, no one was in the forum, and the public baths were empty. A city of ghosts. Ghosts that hid behind windows, hoping they wouldn’t have to fight, themselves.

  At one point, the Dolanians attempted to send a large part of their army through the front gate, but those men received the same reception. Flocks of the black army attacked from all sides so relentlessly Estra could not believe they were human. And in fact, though he was too high to see the details, they did not appear to be human. Their faces looked like skulls in the torchlight.

  One of them lost an arm but continued fighting until he had killed the Dolanian legionnaire who had injured him. They had conviction, something the Dolanians, after centuries of fat peace, did not possess.

  By morning, the outcome was clear. The Dolanian army, though far larger, would have to retreat. They simply could not get all of their men out of the city to face the other army in the style they were trained in. Their fighting was in close quarters with corpses stacked among them. Panic gripped various sections of the Dolanian army. One group even ran away as the army in black sliced them down from behind.

  A horn sounded somewhere, and the Dolanian army began to retreat within the city walls. The army in black tried to follow, but then a horn went off among them, and they began the retreat. Considering that ten times the army they had just fought waited for them behind those walls, it was likely the correct decision. Finally, the gates were pulled closed, thousands of dead abandoned beyond.

  The army in black began collecting the corpses. They picked up their own and the Dolanians.

  And soon Estra saw why.

  As the Dolanian legions retreated to their corners of the city to rearm, rest, and hatch a plan and muster the courage for the next assault, the army in black gathered all the dead Dolanian soldiers into a large pile. Then they cut off the heads and put them on long pikes. The bodies were unceremoniously stacked against the front gate.

  Soon a forest of heads surrounded the city. Some of the Dolanian corpses were placed on spits and cooked over large fires. The arms, legs, and trunks were then cut for meat.

  Estra had to look away. He climbed down from the keep. The streets were completely empty. He had access to all the empty stores and shops, but he wanted none of it. He felt weak and nauseated. He headed for the room he shared with Quell in the city’s poorer area. Refuse was dumped close to there, and the eye-watering stench occasionally gave him headaches. He didn’t noti
ce it now.

  He thought that maybe the senate would negotiate with the army in black, and life would get back to normal. He went to the window every so often, but the streets remained empty.

  38

  Rodrick snapped off the arrow stuck in his belly—not for any healing purposes, just so it wouldn’t get in the way of his sword. The Dolanian army had retreated behind their walls, but a few stragglers remained, men who had been at the front lines and unable to get with the rest of the army.

  Rodrick had stayed back from the battle at first, giving orders and commanding the men, but the call for blood was too strong. He rushed onto the battlefield with a scream. He relished their terror. He imagined they saw him as a sight from the underworld: caked in blood and gore, the skull of a Borian warthog strapped to his face, his hands black. Their horror was palpable, and once he had to stop simply to enjoy the ecstasy of utter power.

  One of the Dolanian legionnaires rushed at him, aiming a sword at his throat. Rodrick tapped the blade aside and spun around as the man stumbled past him. Rodrick thrust his own sword through the soldier’s back, impaling the man in such a way that his feet didn’t touch the ground. Rodrick withdrew the blade, kicking the corpse off of it.

  Hess, covered from his hair to his feet in blood, came over, and they slapped each other and howled like animals.

  “My brothers,” Rodrick bellowed, “our work is not yet done. Stack the dead at the gates to make the opening smaller.”

  Exhausted and injured, the Marauders worked until their fingers bled. Rodrick did not believe there was another army in the world that would do such a thing.

  Under the light of the moon, the gates became impenetrable. Corpses were stacked twenty high and possibly fifty deep, perhaps a hundred. The gates opened inward but Rodrick guessed the Dolanian armies would not be able to dig out through their dead to clear the path. They had a certain fear of the dead that his Marauders didn’t have. But just in case, a hundred Marauder archers were stationed on a nearby hill with orders to kill anyone who approached the gates from within the city.