The Twilight Herald

by Tom Lloyd

  Again, the daemon reacted, but Styrax had already shifted position and as its enormous arm lifted, he lunged, stabbing Kobra’s fangs into the armpit, pushing deep as the daemon howled in pain and fury.

  Styrax retreated and gave a roar of adrenalin-fuelled satisfaction. ‘Do you see this, daemon?’ He brought the sword closer to its face as dull greenish ichor dripped from its fangs. ‘You bleed, daemon, like any mortal; can you feel it now?’

  He drew a heady surge of energy into his body and felt flames rise from the armour encasing his body, an echo of the armour used to ensnare his son. In the distance he heard Kohrad’s strained bellow, hoarse defiance that sent a thirst for revenge shuddering through his body.

  ‘And that feeling is fear -can you feel it now?’ he asked. ‘Have you been a prince among daemons for so long you’ve forgotten fear?’ He was happy to take his time now, to put on a show for the watching commanders.

  Try to take my son’s soul? For that, I’ll make you hurt. ‘I’ll show you what fear is again, daemon, and when I send you back broken and ruined to your pestilent burrow in the deepest pit of Ghenna, before you are consumed by the scavengers there you will tell them. You will spread the word and teach them to fear me. I will destroy and leave for the vultures any daemon that thinks it can own or control me or mine.’

  He charged forward and smashed aside the daemon’s sword, stepping inside the reach of the flail and grabbing its wrist. As it tried to get an arm around his neck, Styrax reversed his sword and stabbed backwards into the daemon’s gut, then snapped his head back to smash the reinforced peak of his helm into the daemon’s jaw. Before it had time to recover, Styrax wrapped his free hand with white coils of fire and punched into the daemon’s right arm. The fire exploded on impact in a shower of burning glassy shards that buried deep into its flesh.

  With Kobra still reversed he slashed it up across the inside of the daemon’s right knee, halting the backswing almost immediately as he grabbed the hilt with both hands and drove the tip back down into the open wound. The fangs went deep and the daemon screamed.

  Now Styrax could hear its fear. For perhaps the first time in ten thousand years the daemon-prince was afraid.

  ‘Fear me,’ Styrax growled, ripping his sword from the wound and drawing another great swell of magic into his gut. White sparks burst at the edges of his vision as he drew as much as he could, resolving to change the manner of attack before the daemon could adapt. Around him the temple swam and he heard a shrieking chitter run around the walkway. The flames rose on his body, growing fierce and hot on his skin, but the pain was both exhilarating and intoxicating. At that moment he knew how his son had developed the addiction to the daemon’s armour.

  He punched forward with both fists, hammering them into the daemon’s scarred midriff and releasing the magic inside at the same moment. The flames rushed through him and surged over the daemon as it was slammed backwards into one of the temple’s great pillars. It crashed with the sound of mountains colliding, and the great blocks of stone creaked and wavered under the impact.

  ‘Do you fear me yet, daemon?’ Styrax roared.

  A howl of rage preceded a torrent of black energy that flew towards him. Styrax dived out of the way and it hit the stone floor where he’d been standing an instant before, cracking the stone with a crash. His shield wouldn’t stop raw power, but at least the daemon would be fighting on a white-eye’s terms rather than its own.

  Styrax retaliated with a wildly thrown spear of fire that lanced into the pillar above the daemon. It scorched a ten-foot segment black and tore another great hole in the stone.

  The daemon jumped up in the air, cleaver ready to cut down into Styrax’s body. The white-eye rose to meet it, using his body like a huge armoured fist, knocking the daemon off-balance and driving it into the white shaft of the eternal flame. A bright burst of fire flashed out across the temple as the daemon passed through Tsatach’s holy light and it screamed in pain. Styrax gave it no chance to recover. He dived through the flame himself and stabbed down into the torso of the daemon, putting all his weight behind the blow. It howled and punched up at him, launching the Menin lord up into the air to smash one of the walkways between the pillars. The stone slabs exploded in a shower of stone shards and blistering sparks and the entire temple shuddered as the magic holding it up started to fail.

  Styrax crashed to the ground, the shock of the impact sending a stab of pain through his body. For a moment the Land seemed to stop around him—

  The scent of grass appeared in his mind. Styrax smiled inwardly as he remembered his father; the mornings out in the meadow when he’d first learned how to use a sword. Caution and calm had been his father’s constant mantra; ‘Lure them into rashness, never do so yourself.’ Styrax nodded and felt his lips twitch in echo as his father, now centuries deceased, repeated that advice to his son: ‘Pride, my son, pride is a reaper.’ —and the Land rushed back with noise and fire and pain and light assaulting every sense. His instincts retook control and drove him forward. Not even stopping to catch his breath, Styrax ran to the temple altar as purple bands of magic lashed down, carving great rents in the paved floor where he’d crouched just a few moments earlier.

  Bracing his good foot against the altar, he pushed off into the air, feeling the muscles in his back strain as he readied another blow. Kobra was covered in ichor now, and it left a trail of deep crimson light through the air as it smashed into the daemon’s own cruelly curved weapon, which exploded into a thousand tiny shards. Styrax let the force of the blow spin him back around, giving him a moment to recover his wits.

  A fountain of magic erupted from the broken stub of the cleaver, green trails whipping around like enraged snakes. The daemon hissed and threw it away. It skittered across the floor for ten yards before coming to an abrupt halt. Out of the corner of his eye Styrax saw the lashing snakes slam down into the ground and begin to worm their way under the stone paving slabs, driving them up.

  The daemon now held its flail with both hands, keeping the mace-heads moving, swinging them up threateningly whenever Styrax took a step closer. So fear has taught you something then, he thought with a grim smile. Try to keep me at bay while you work out what to do.

  He feinted forward and was rewarded by the flail being whipped across where his knees would have been. As soon as the heads had passed Styrax leaped forward for real, following the swinging chains back to the source and chopping down to sever the daemon’s right wrist. Burning green ichor spurted out over the temple floor and it reeled back, trying desperately to ward him off.

  The white-eye ignored the flail as it clattered weakly off his armour and lashed out at the daemon’s already damaged knee-joint. The force of the blow sent a judder along the blade that numbed Styrax’s hands, but his ferocious resolve drove him on and he turned to smash an elbow into the daemon’s gut. The handle of the flail crashed against the side of his head, sending black stars bursting across his eyes, but the daemon was weak now, and the battering, though painful, was too weak to stop him.

  He rained down blows until at last he had the daemon-prince on the end of his fanged sword. Kobra pierced its chest and pinned it against a great marble column.

  Styrax staggered for a moment. The air was alive with colours and magic rampaging uncontrolled; the air shuddered under the assault and he could hear the screams and hollers of the inhabitants of the Dark Place all around him. On the edge of his sight he saw flames against a looming darkness, the border between realms weakening further. His eyes were blurred and fiery pain flared in his gut, but he had enough strength left for the killing blow. With a roar he yanked Kobra free then hewed savagely at the daemon’s neck and deep into the pillar behind. The impact almost lifted him off his feet as the black sword cleaved through stone; for a terrible heartbeat the darkness descended and the heat of Ghenna’s sulphurous fires washed over his skin, then he tore the blade clear and staggered out beyond the temple’s boundary line into the cool morning light.

/>   He staggered forward, a groan escaping his lips as he fought to find the ground under each step. It took a few moments for the Land to steady underneath him and the fire behind his eyes to fade enough for him to see again. He sank to his knees and tore his helm off, gasping at the touch of the morning air on his skin.

  Somewhere behind the blur he heard someone -Kohrad? - shout, ‘Father!’ Then someone tried to slip his fingers around Kobra’s hilt . . . with an effort he made out Kohrad’s face and forced open his fist so his son could take the sword from his hand.

  Drawing Kohrad close, Styrax put his lips to his ear and whispered fiercely, ‘Find it.’

  As he spoke, a symphony of shattering stone filled the air and a tremble ran through the ground like a massive earthquake. The pillar Styrax had hacked into was buckling as the magic was drawn into Ghenna with the daemon-prince’s broken spirit. A thunderous crash split the air as the pillar collapsed onto the ruined temple floor, followed by the relentless sound of thousands of tons of stone imploding as the Temple of the Sun became a daemon’s cairn.

  Eventually the devastation slowed to a halt and the echoes of the temple’s death faded away, leaving nothing more than a memory ringing in their ears. After that, there was only a ragged sound that Styrax could not place for a while until he realised it was his own laboured breath. Around him, everything was perfectly still, the hush of a temple at prayer.

  He blinked as the Land crept back into focus. It was covered by a haze; for a moment Styrax wondered what had happened to his eyes until he realised it was a cloud of dust. He let Kohrad help him to his unsteady feet and bear his weight for a moment longer, then a voice in the back of his mind reminded him that the young warrior still had a task to perform.

  He straightened and gave Kohrad a light shove towards the ruin of the temple, then made his way waveringly to the group of Chetse commanders who were standing some twenty yards off. They looked aghast, too stunned to even move. One had sunk to his knees in prayer; the others just gaped at the collapse of Tsatach’s greatest temple in the Land - and the eternal flame, the burning heart of the Chetse tribe.

  He had just snuffed it out.

  The dust swirled out to cover the Temple Plain, fading into nothing in the clear air above them. Somewhere behind him a loose piece of stone thumped heavily onto the packed earth of the temple floor.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Styrax said hoarsely to the assembled Chetse, staggering sideways for a moment before he reasserted control over his body, ‘gentlemen, you are dismissed.’

  They stared at him, shocked and uncomprehending. He took another step and his lip twisted into a snarl as the ever-present bloodlust screamed to take charge once more. He heard one start a horrified prayer, but it was only fleeting as they turned and fled like a herd of spooked deer.

  Kastan Styrax, Lord of the Menin, grinned drunkenly. He felt a trickle of blood fall from his lip; maybe he’d bitten it. He swung around and saw that Duke Vrill had also backed off to a safe distance. That amused him; this was Vrill’s best chance to kill him and become Lord of the Menin himself . . . but no, Vrill had more sense than that. Kohrad carried Styrax’s own sword after all, and he was not as weak as he looked.

  Styrax looked out at where the low morning sun shone from just above the western cliffs. In his chest he could feel his heart hammering away, reminding him with every thump that he was still alive. At each beat he wanted to call out, to shout with laughter. He wiped the blood from his mouth, never once taking his eyes from the horizon beyond which the Gods lived in splendid isolation away from their mortal subjects. The legend was that they had retired there to recover after the Great War and the horrors they had inflicted upon the defeated, and there they would stay, apart from the affairs of mortals, content to sit and play with strands of destiny, as long as they never again had to see any of their own dying at the hands of mortals.

  Were you watching, you bastards? Do you fear me yet?

  CHAPTER 24

  Breytech eased the door of his room open far enough to peer out at the street beyond. It looked quiet now, but he still had to be wary. He’d barricaded himself in the cramped room for days now, and from the shouts and screams outside, he knew the city was falling further and further into chaos. Over the last month the Chetse trader had seen the character of the city change completely as the locals descended into savagery. Though he was a frequent visitor to the city, Breytech had never seen anything like this before. Passers-by had turned on him, or attacked their fellow citizens, without provocation or intimidation, as abruptly and unexpectedly as a sentinel lizard guarding its nest: timid one moment; savage the next. He grimaced; at least with a sentinel you had a chance of escaping. In Scree the people didn’t have the sense of animals; they wouldn’t content themselves with just chasing you off.

  He fought the urge to close the door and push the table back against it. Eyes that had grown used to the gloom of shuttered windows squinted in the painful light. It was the hottest part of the day; the sun was fierce enough to kill the old and sick. He was a Chetse and knew perfectly well the dangers of Tsatach’s ferocious glare, but he had to gamble that even the insane would not venture out at midday. As much as he wanted to stay and hide, he knew he had to get out before his tired limbs grew too weary to carry him out of this place to replenish his water skin. He looked back at the cramped and airless room that had been his prison for the past week, since things had become really bad, and felt revulsion crawling over his skin as he realised he hated that space with a passion he couldn’t explain. The weather had been merely warm when he rented the room, and what reason had there been for anyone to think he would spend much time there beyond sleeping? But worse it had become, and the four square yards of grime-encrusted floorboards had started to stink like a festering gaol.

  Beyond a table and bed, and the chamber-pot that had forced him to unblock the door each day and risk being seen, much of the room was taken up with Breytech’s remaining wares, stacked against one wall. He’d removed the canvas sacks filled with bolts of cloth from the warehouse he usually used after watching the owner, a man he’d known for five years, go crazy. Two nights ago the man had burned his own building down, screaming frantically all the while about shadows with claws.

  He found his own mind wandering now as the waves of heat radiating from the streets made him drift feverishly away. Images of his children appeared in his mind; their skin untouched by the smallpox that had taken them from him. When he’d rolled over on the straw-packed bed this morning he’d felt his wife’s soft breath on his ear and had turned with a smile to greet her, though she’d been gone these past three winters now. And all the while, there were sounds on the edge of hearing: distant shouts and howls that a part of him wanted to join in with, the quiet hum of a priest’s incantation, the groan and ache of the building as it suffered through another blistering day. On occasion, a faint scent of tainted sweetness found him, like overripe peaches left out in the sun. The stink of waste and decay was all he smelled in Scree now. He’d even forgotten what a breeze felt like . . .

  With a real effort of will, Breytech drove the confused thoughts from his mind and muttered an old mantra his grand-mother had taught him, a prayer of sorts against the maddening effect of the sun that could drive men from the road and out into the desert. It had no effect on the pounding behind his eyes but the words were comforting and kept his mind focused. He edged out into the street, eyes flickering nervously around at the baked empty road.

  Scree was as still and silent as only a dead thing could be; the diseased city streets looked on the verge of crumbling to dust, all the life sucked from them. Breytech crept forward, mouthing the mantra and keeping in the shadows as best he could, though in truth there was no hiding from the relentless sun. He wore a shapeless white desert robe and a scarf of the same material draped over his head to protect him from the sun. Hidden in one voluminous sleeve was an ancient long-knife, its edge battered and scarred with use, but still dangerous enough to aff
ord him a small shred of comfort.

  The main street before him was empty of all life. With the bright sun reflecting off bleached stone and the air shimmering uneasily under its assault, he found it hard to make out details -until he realised with a start that the largest building around, a merchant’s office, he thought, was now just a charred ruin.

  Without warning a whisper reached his ear as it raced around the confines of the street. Breytech flinched and looked behind him, pushing his scarf back a little to afford a better view - but it was still empty: no people, nothing alive to move, or speak. Despite the beads of sweat running down his throat, Breytech felt a chill pass through him, as though a ghost had laid its pale hand on his neck.

  For a few moments he was frozen to the spot, until a drop of sweat from his brow ran down his nose like a tear and it jerked him into action, sending him stumbling off towards the spot where he thought he’d seen a well. If that looked unsafe, he would have to go further south, to the Temple District, maybe. He’d seen a shrine to Vasle -surely the God of Rivers would not fail him? For a moment he wondered whether he should have brought an offering, but then he thought that Vasle was unlikely to be listening to prayers from Scree. Perhaps only Death walked these streets, with his more awful Aspects, like the Reapers, at his heel. Or perhaps even they had deserted the city and turned their back in judgment. What curse on men, when even the final blessing of Death is denied them?

  As he scampered from shadow to shadow he saw bodies. A whimper of fear escaped his parched mouth. Some were burned, limbs curled up in their final moment of pain. Some were missing limbs, even heads; others lay with the weapons that had killed them still in the wounds, eyes staring up to the sky as though pleading for help from Gods that had abandoned them.

  He was beginning to feel like the sole survivor of some atrocious cataclysm. He peered into shattered doorways, but with the sun so high, there were only impenetrable shadows within. Slumped against one half-burned door was the torso of a child, missing its limbs. Breytech looked around, but they were nowhere to be seen. He tried not to dwell on why they might have been taken away. The fearful voices in the distant corners of his mind shrieked more urgently, and it was all he could do not to wail uncontrollably himself.