by David Benem
“Thank you, Arleigh,” Lannick said. He smiled crookedly, hardly believing those three words had just dropped from his mouth.
“Least I could do,” Arleigh said.
“He’s not a bad fellow,” Lannick said. “He wants the same thing we all do. It’s just that he and I have a… history.”
“That I gathered.”
Lannick looked ahead. “He’s sworn to protect Rune from our oldest enemies. From those things that killed Brugan. He can help us in the war.”
Arleigh grunted. “Always wondered why Fane accused you of being some kind of witch. After seeing what you did at Rellic, I suppose I know, and I daresay I’m glad you are whatever you are. I never would have believed the world held such… devils.”
Lannick’s hand fell to his Coda. “A war has been waged against them in the dark places of this world for centuries. A secret battle fought in the shadows. Ogrund’s one of the soldiers fighting that war.”
“And so are you.”
“I was,” Lannick said, glancing to Arleigh. The man’s face twisted with its eternal scowl, though his eyes seemed to carry little of the hate they’d shown at Kevlin’s farm. “I was,” Lannick said again, “and I walked away. But now that other war is upon me—upon us all—once more.”
“There’s only one war now,” said Arleigh. “Just our fight to stay out of the grave and put others in it.” He chuckled. “I like to keep things simple.”
“What say you, Captain?” said Black Jon, lounging on a barrel with his back against the tall spokes of a cart. He swiped crumbs from grubby hands into the campfire between them and gestured to the map aside it, the curled ends of the parchment set aglow by the fire’s light. “Less than two days to the gates of Riverweave. We’d long thought to enter the city at its northern end, just as you had, but now that seems ill-advised. The latest additions to our number say the thanes finally prevailed in their demands to send more soldiers to the front. Now half a column—half the Fourth Column of Ironmoor—marches toward it. Mere days distant, they say. If we get pinched at the northern gates between Fane’s men and the coming reinforcements then our little foray could be rather brief. The south? Then we’re fighting Fane’s men and the Arranese horde both at once. And the western edge of the city is wet, muck-covered sprawl, and no place to be fighting a battle.”
Lannick tugged at the tasteless hardtack bread with his teeth. He ripped away a dry chunk and chewed it for a moment before deciding he needed a pull of ale to wash it down his gullet. He wiped the ale’s foam from his face then looked to the map, shifting his crooked jaw. “We shouldn’t try the northern gates. We—”
“Yes we should,” interjected deMond. “We could double our pace and sweep around the city. Deception can be an elegant strategy…” he said, tracing a finger across the map. “It could be just like the renegade thanes’ clash with High King Dermangorn three hundred years ago, when the High King used the brilliant strategy of disguising his men. Think of it: we still wear the red sash. Wash away the black mark we’ve placed upon it and we look no different from ordinary soldiers of Rune. The guards at the gate could be persuaded we’re a vanguard of the Fourth Column.”
Black Jon straightened atop the barrel. “But if the general learns of our approach and sends word to the new column? Then we’re done for.”
Lannick stared to the map. “The General Fane I know doesn’t want us—or anyone else—coming to stand in the way of his mad ambitions. If he learns of our coming then my guess is he’ll get word to the reinforcing column and order them to deal with us. Then Fane’s taken care of both us and the Fourth. And if he doesn’t learn of our coming? The northern gates still stay shut. He doesn’t want the Fourth entering the city. He knows that’s a column with a new set of officers certain to have heard the rumors and certain to be more inclined to question the general’s decisions. Fane is a paranoid man, and he’ll leave them encamped north of the city until he’s finished slaughtering what remains of his present command.”
Black Jon nodded. “It’s a damned mess, whichever way we look at it.”
Sergeant deMond stiffened and stared to Lannick. “Then what, Captain, is your learned recommendation?”
“Dead gods, deMond,” sighed Sergeant Kaldare, staring to the night sky above the encampment. “We’re here to find a way to win this war, not elbow our way toward some perceived position. The captain here is on the same side as us and knows Fane better than most.”
Sergeant deMond fingered his patchy goatee. “No doubt the captain knows how to end on the losing side of the general. But does the captain know how to prevail against him, I wonder? Does he have any concept of a winning strategy?”
“Careful, bookish boy,” growled Arleigh Lay from Lannick’s side. “Captain Lannick here has already won a war. Did that fucking bastard Fane use his power to bring Lannick down afterward? Sure. But Lannick won that war.” He took a draw from his tankard. “Where were you during Pryam’s Bay? Judging from afar while doing nothing of consequence yourself?”
The sergeant’s eyes bulged. “How dare—”
“Safe with your little books, were you?” Arleigh huffed. “You—”
“Arleigh,” Lannick said, “enough.” He uttered the words in a scolding fashion, though in his heart he was more grateful for the man’s presence than he would ever have expected.
Black Jon shuffled atop his barrel. “We respect rank here, Corporal Lay.”
Arleigh looked to Black Jon. “Then your sergeant here should remember he’s addressing a captain.”
Black Jon chuckled. “Fair enough,” he said, eyes moving to Lannick. “My question remains, Captain. We have a quandary, as smart folk like deMond would call it.” He winked and took a long pull from his mug, draining its contents. He looked about. “Harl?” he called. “More ale.”
Lannick bent close to the fire between them. “We cannot afford to lose one more man than absolutely necessary, from Rune’s army or your own.”
“And hence our quandary.” Black Jon hoisted his empty tankard and looked about again. “Harl! We’ve precious few moments left to enjoy a swallow of ale!” He shook his head and looked to Lannick. “Captain? What say you?”
There was a clatter near them and a hiss of steam from the fire.
“Sorry, sir,” said Harl, standing at the fire’s edge and clutching tankards against his chest. His dirty shirt was soaked.
“Ah, Harl,” Black Jon said with a smile. “That’s alright. So long as most of the ale is still inside those cups.”
Harl peered into the mugs and nodded. “Aye, sir.”
Black Jon held out a hand. “Then by the dead gods give me one. Either victory or death awaits us, and both are deserving of a drink.”
Lannick watched as Black Jon snatched a tankard and drained it in a single swallow. Though his own thirst was still strong he waved away the mug Harl offered him. Keep your edges sharp, lad, he thought.
Harl looked to him with a narrow gaze then limped away into the night.
“So,” said Black Jon, tilting his barrel forward to peer over the map, “you think the southern edge or the western. A choice among evils if you ask me.”
Lannick stared to him. “Everything is now.”
“Aye,” Black Jon said. “That it is. Then how would you suggest we meet our glorious deaths?”
Lannick smirked. “I prefer that happen only after General Fane’s.” He studied again the map. “And I think the best way to ensure that is to march straight east. We spread out. We break into small units of a dozen or less and try to slip through the city’s western edge. It’s a mess, just as you say—the Arranese won’t attack it for that very reason. It’s also more difficult for Fane’s men to patrol. Besides, Fane’s attention will be fixed on the Arranese to the south and the Fourth Column to the north.”
“Foolish,” said deMond, waving a hand. “Utterly foolish. An army broken into that many pieces could never fight a battle.”
Lannick looked to him. “We
don’t fight the battle in pieces. We regroup once we’re in the city. Once we’ve—”
Sergeant deMond snorted. “We just march more than two thousand men through the city gates?”
“No,” grated Lannick. “As I said, we move in small groups. We use the rivers, the canals, the channels and sewers. Folk are bound to be fleeing the city and the place will be awash with confusion.”
“Ulder,” grunted Arleigh. “Ulder Prane, one of our number, used to be a smuggler in these parts. Says his brother still is. If there’s anyone who’d know the soft spots of the city and the best ways to enter…”
Black Jon rubbed his chin. “Sounds risky, Captain. If you’d not won one war already I’m not sure I’d consider it.”
Lannick shifted his jaw and gestured to the map with his chunk of hardtack. “Once we’ve regrouped inside the city we make our purpose known. Fane may not want reinforcements but I reckon many of his soldiers feel differently. If those men have seen their brothers fall—if they’ve heard tell of defeat after defeat—and then see armed men arriving to help them? My guess is a good many will choose to march in our ranks instead of the general’s. Soldiers value their lives more than their orders.” He looked squarely to Black Jon. “You and your lot are proof of that.”
“Fire! Fire!”
The shouting tore Lannick from his slumber. He struggled to sit, sucking in a sharp breath and looking about with bleary eyes. Dawn hadn’t yet colored the sky but a harsh glow blazed but fifty feet distant.
A terrible clamor rose from the camp. Shouting. Men stumbling about and shaking away the fog of sleep. Others running, some away from the fire and some toward it. Others aflame.
Footfalls pounded close. Lannick just managed to avoid being trampled.
“What the fuck?” cursed Arleigh Lay from somewhere nearby.
There came the sound of shattering glass and fire engulfed a nearby tent. Men ran from it, screaming, their clothing afire. In an instant the tent became a tower of licking flames and billowing smoke.
Soldiers everywhere scrambled and the whole encampment seemed a frenzy of confusion. Men drew swords that shone in the blaze though none seemed to know where to thrust them.
A thickly-built fellow came near. “Lannick,” the man grunted. It was Ogrund. “The camp has been breached. I will locate the raiders. Don your Coda so we can communicate. No doubt I will require your aid.” He set off, slipping through the roiling crowd with unnatural grace.
Lannick tugged on his boots and stood. He fastened sword and purse to his belt, pulled on a padded shirt and coat of chainmail, then looked about.
Within moments wagonloads of supplies and more tents had erupted in flames. The strides and shouts of soldiers seemed to shake the ground beneath. The air seared the skin.
Then yet another blaze, this a tent mere yards from Lannick. The flames grew quickly, the heat singeing Lannick’s face. Confused soldiers poured out as the flames consumed the tent’s flimsy fabric. One man with clothes on fire ran close and nearly knocked Lannick from his feet.
More screaming.
More fire.
The camp felt like a furnace.
“Arleigh!” Lannick called.
“Here,” came a groan, though from where Lannick couldn’t guess.
Is he hurt?
Lannick spun about, searching. “Arleigh?”
“Right here,” came a nasty voice.
Lannick turned. Something smashed against the side of his head. He staggered, eyes blurry. The warm drip of blood upon his cheek. “Ar—”
“Get him!”
Another crack upon his head.
He slumped to the ground.
Sinking, drowning.
And all turned black.
17
THE GRIP OF DARKNESS
Prefect Gamghast strained blurry eyes against the dying candlelight. The tome on the desk before him seemed covered by steamy glass, the stains of its text shifting and clouding over.
He squinted vainly, then sighed. A cataract had formed in his left eye and made an already difficult task all the more so. The Sanctum’s healing arts could address many ills, though it seemed the withering of age wasn’t one.
He eased back against the creaking spindles of his chair, his spine catching painfully as he did. Exhaustion weighed upon him, along with a growing sense of futility. The former he could manage but the latter troubled him deeply. He was a practical man by nature, and the task of saving the realm suddenly seemed an utterly impractical endeavor.
Defeat was all but a certainty.
Thoughts of the chamberlain and his foul Necrist companions haunted Gamghast’s head. They had defiled the holiest of Rune’s shrines, the Godswell. They’d bled the corpse of High King Deragol and seemed to commune with their dark, dead god by virtue of that hideous act. Rune’s ancient enemy had taken hold like a cancer in the kingdom’s very heart.
And all while we did nothing.
The cavernous library felt still as a crypt, a stale thing that seemed to Gamghast a fine symbol of the Sanctum’s stagnation. He smacked a hand against the desk, knowing the Sanctum’s inaction to be the very worst of things. His ignorance—indeed the ignorance of the whole of his order—confounded him. He thought of those countless years the Sanctum had devoted to prayer and study and healing yet none to preparation. None devoted to mounting a defense against an old foe they’d permitted themselves to all but forget.
He’d spent much of the last week here, secreted away within the musty expanse of the Abbey’s library. He’d tried to recover what the Sanctum once knew of the enemy and the weapons to fight them, scouring the library’s deepest recesses and the Lector’s collection of banned books. He’d forced failing eyes upon forgotten tomes and dry, crackling scrolls that nearly crumbled when unfurled.
And he’d found precious little. For all the wisdom the Sanctum hoarded it seemed only meager scraps had been saved of the knowledge he needed most.
He wondered at the wisdom of their Lector, of the Sentinel Castor. He wondered why Castor would have failed to prepare his pupils, why he would have disregarded the threat the Necrists posed.
Could he, too, have been blind to their coming?
Gamghast shook his head. No. His journey and the note the chamberlain claims to have intercepted indicate otherwise. But if Castor knew, why did he not tell us?
He smoothed the wild wisps of his beard. Doubt nagged at him. Did he not trust us? Did he not trust us because Rune banished him and his kin so long ago?
Or worse, could he have meant to betray us?
His mind reeled with these thoughts, these troubling possibilities. He contemplated them for a moment, staring out upon the darkness.
But then he shook his head once more. None of it mattered. He needed to be practical, to find solutions. What the Lector could have known, or could have done, did nothing to help Rune now. What mattered was finding a means to save the kingdom, a means to keep all from surrendering to the dark and to the Lord of Nightmares.
He leaned forward to again pore over his book. It was one of the very few things he’d uncovered that seemed of use, an ancient text he’d found buried beneath a mountain of rolled scrolls and maps. The brittle book appeared to have been written when the War of Fates and its aftermath were still wet upon the tongue of history. It whispered of days when the Sanctum and the Variden worked in concert to hunt down and finish what was left of Yrghul’s disciples, of old magic and old foes.
The tome spoke of the Necrists as a very real and present danger and with an urgency Gamghast hadn’t read in any book penned in more recent centuries. Gamghast read of a hidden stronghold where the Necrists plied their darkest secrets, and of a desperate venture to destroy them forever.
He strained his eyes now to read of that effort, of that mission to annihilate the enemy. He focused his rheumy vision and read of members of the Sanctum and their Variden brothers discovering a shadowpath, an invisible passage used by the Necrists to travel beneath the s
hadows of the world. And he read of two scores of Necrists and their abominations discovering the intruders and the battle that ensued.
He read of the Variden using their sacred instruments—their Codas—to muster their powers. He read of their inhuman agility, their gift of concealing themselves from eyes unwanted, and of swords dripping with flames that cleaved the darkness. He read, too, of long-dead prefects proclaiming forgotten words of spellcraft, incantations that pulled lightning from the heavens. Spells that stole the life from the Necrists and turned to ash the dead flesh they wore.
The prefects and the Variden had prevailed. They’d prevailed despite losing half their number and facing many foes.
Prefects, Gamghast thought. Prefects worked these powers. Not just Castor. We once possessed the tools to defeat the enemy.
He resumed the tale, reading of how after the battle the victorious prefects and Variden had found the shadowpath altered and misdirected. They wandered lost for days. When at last they found the Necrists’ stronghold they found it abandoned and its contents burned.
Gamghast closed the book. In spite of its ending the story imparted hope. It seemed, he thought, there had to be some way to beat back the grip of darkness.
He took a ragged breath and withdrew from the tome, eyes drifting about the library’s expanse. Shadows crowded all about, oppressive and impenetrable. The ceiling above, where stretched great arches of stone, was lost behind a blanket of black.
Gamghast shifted in his chair and held a hand upward. He drew in a long breath and brought certitude to his voice. “Illienne abralide y ganode allum!” he commanded. Illienne awaken and give me light!
Light, white and pure and brilliant, erupted from his hand. The shadows—all of them—cowered and vanished, and the whole of the library seemed lit with a radiance as blinding as the midday sun. Gamghast smiled even as the fleeting light dimmed and gave way once more to the heavy dark.
If we can but find the tools, we can find a chance of victory.
A door creaked open somewhere behind him followed by shuffling steps upon the tiled floor. Gamghast turned as far as his achy spine would allow and spied the glow of a candle moving between rows of sagging shelves. A rotund figure emerged, round features muddled by apparent concern.
