The Wrath of Heroes (A Requiem for Heroes Book 2)

by David Benem

  Edren shook his head. “Rune’s king has died and Rune has moved on. The people of Rune long ago wearied of old traditions and forgotten faiths. Sovereign Alamis was our rightful leader, and the only treason that’s been committed is your murder of the man.”

  Queen Reyis moved by Gamghast and toward Tannin.

  “My queen!” Gamghast hissed.

  She proceeded onward and soon stood at Tannin’s side. “Rune has a king,” she said with a voice clear and true. “Rune has a king, and by law so long as I carry the heir the crown is mine and mine alone. Stand down, just as Tannin said. Leave this place now, or be led out in chains.”

  The sound of many boots resounded from the passageways feeding the hall.

  Gamghast darted his gaze about. Tannin had managed to summon a few dozen loyal soldiers, all of whom gathered near with weapons at the ready. But if the guards of the Bastion remained loyal to Alamis and his followers, Gamghast knew Tannin’s men would be vastly outnumbered.

  He scowled then quietly rehearsed the divine words of destruction he’d used in the Grand Court of Magistrate Examiners. He did not desire bloodshed unless no other option remained, but this seemed such a circumstance. He patted his robes and realized he’d not the quicksilver the spell required. He cursed beneath his breath.

  The sound of hard footfalls grew louder and the jingle of moving armor accompanied it. Gamghast tried to see something through the gathering but could not. He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant and muttered a prayer.

  Sweet Illienne please protect those righteous and true to your cause…

  “Stand down,” Tannin demanded once more.

  Sir Edren strode about, his gait a swagger. He shook his head again. “Rune has moved on. Those who’ve realized that are making ready for a new order of things. An order that needs no king, and certainly needs no queen.”

  “Stand down,” Tannin repeated. “I’ll not ask again.”

  Sir Edren snorted. “You and your so-called queen will never make it out of here alive. There are four hundred guards in this castle, and it sounds to me at least half of them are headed this way.”

  “They’ll not arrive before I’ve dealt with you.”

  “You’d not dare.”

  Tannin took another stride forward and leveled his blade toward Sir Edren.

  “Tannin!” shouted Queen Reyis.

  Tannin stood still, frozen as a statue with sword poised before him.

  Sir Edren glanced to the knot of nobles behind him then back to Tannin. “Mind your leash, dog,” he said through a chuckle.

  Queen Reyis drew in a deep breath. She pressed hands against the swell of her stomach and straightened. “Tannin, take his head.”

  Tannin moved swiftly, a whirlwind to behold. He thrust forward and swept his blade in a tight arc not once but twice across Sir Edren’s throat. The nobleman gasped silently, eyes wandering the room then rolling toward the ceiling and the back of his skull. He collapsed at Tannin’s feet and as he did his head tumbled from his shoulders. A great crimson pool spread from the wound.

  A horrified gasp rose from many, Gamghast among them.

  “Who else?” said Queen Reyis, her voice a clarion call. “Who else among you?”

  Those remaining retreated many steps, beholding Edren’s decapitated corpse in abject terror. They clutched each other, stammering as they seemed unable to make sense of their predicament.

  Tannin stood firm as a bulwark before them, between the nobles and the queen and with his blade poised dangerously. “None dares challenge the queen’s right of rule in this place. None!”

  Soon the hall thundered with the sound of heavy footfalls. Gamghast strained to see though the crowd and the dim chamber beyond. There were glimmers, reflections of many candles and torches. Weapons and armor, he knew. It seemed more than a hundred soldiers poured into the hall.

  Tannin bent to wipe his blade on Sir Edren’s puffy shirt, then rose and turned to Queen Reyis. “Alamis is dead, my queen, and Rune’s soldiers are keenly aware of the losses suffered at the front. We need fear nothing from these guards.”

  “I pray you’re right,” Gamghast whispered to himself, patting the wisps of his beard with a trembling hand. Sweet Illienne please spare your loyal servant and all those who act for the greater good of your realm.

  The mass of soldiers rattled to a stop. “What happens here?” came a gruff shout.

  “Treason!” exclaimed Tannin, turning back toward the crowd.

  A great murmur arose from the gathered nobles.

  “Treason?” cried one.

  “These traitors murdered Sovereign Alamis!” exclaimed another, a tall man with an upturned nose. “Seize them!”

  Tannin stood firm, sword gripped at his side. “Who commands the Bastion’s Guard” he shouted. “Captain Belwyn?”

  “Aye,” came an answer from the soldiers at the hall’s far end. “Sergeant Tannin?”

  Tannin nodded then sheathed his sword. “Aye. This mob has threatened the queen’s life and denies her authority here in her very home.”

  The nobles traded what appeared nervous glances.

  “Traitors!” shouted the tall noble. “This man and his company are traitors! We—several of us—witnessed them slaughter Alamis and his personal guard! We demand their arrest, and the Bastion’s Guard is bound to obey!”

  “Stay precisely where you are, traitors,” echoed Captain Belwyn’s voice, “and do not dare draw arms.”

  The tall noble raised his chin. “Justice, at last.”

  “Seize them,” commanded the captain.

  The clatter of hard-heeled boots followed. Soon many armored soldiers pierced the crowd of nobles, hefting halberds and swords.

  Gamghast braced himself against his staff and swiped a bent hand across the wisps of his beard. He thought again of the spells he’d learned and wondered what sort of divine aid he could summon.

  “Against the walls with them!” shouted Captain Belwyn.

  Sweet Illienne please spare your loyal servant! Gamghast gripped his staff and made ready to call a blinding light.

  “Against the walls!” commanded the captain once more.

  “How dare you!” complained the tall noble. “Have you any—”

  His words were cut short by the butt of a halberd against his belly.

  Gamghast’s eyes widened and he looked to Queen Reyis. She stood near, straight and proud, hands caressing the fullness of her pregnancy. Beside her loomed Tannin, weapon at the ready and the threat of danger upon his one-eyed face. The soldier’s features seemed to ease, though, as the castle guard manhandled more and more of the nobles and pressed them to the hall’s edges. Soon all had been forced aside by bullying soldiers and the chamber ahead cleared.

  “My queen,” Captain Belwyn said, emerging from the hall’s edge to stand before them. He bowed. “It is a fine and blessed thing to have you and the proper heir to the Bastion home at last. Welcome, and may the dead gods never allow another to deny you entry again.”

  Queen Reyis slammed a fist against the wall. “They will pay for this,” she said in a low, level tone. “They will pay for this with all they hold dear.”

  Gamghast took a step to stand beside her, just inside the royal bedchamber. It was an opulent room, all purple pillows and plush chairs and ornate tapestries, though the odor within was most foul. At the chamber’s far end stood a bed, upon which lay High King Deragol. His thin, rotting corpse had been stretched to the bed’s four posts, gray and emaciated. A crude valve had been fitted into the High King’s left side and a bowl of congealed blood rested beside it.

  “Damn them,” Reyis said, seeming to suppress a gag. “Damn them all to the old hells.”

  Gamghast pressed a hand to his beard and swallowed hard. This was a desecration Rune had not witnessed in centuries. “Alamis and the Necrists have defiled your husband as well as this place.”

  “They will pay,” Reyis said through gritted teeth. “Tannin,” she said, turning her head
, “gather but a few soldiers and take with you his body. Build a small pyre in the gardens and prepare to set fire to it this night.”

  “It shall be done,” Tannin said with a sharp bow.

  “My queen,” Gamghast said, pressing nearer. “He should be buried in the manner of his forefathers.”

  “No,” she breathed, shaking her head. “He will be burned. His corpse will not rest in the ground in this abominable state.”

  “My queen?” asked Gamghast.

  “Burned and then mourned quietly,” she said, her voice firm. “I’ll not have my husband’s last years be the subject of derision or ridicule. I’ll not have his funeral be an opportunity for traitors or the disheartened to cast blame upon him for the war or mock the madness that afflicted him in his final years. No. We will mourn him quietly, and let him pass to the heavens of the Elder God.”

  Gamghast approached the body. The High King seemed a ghastly horror, the smell awful. The corpse appeared withered and ruined, the skin wrinkled and blanched as though drained of all the fluids within it. The eyes, the haunting eyes, stared wide at the ceiling, lids peeled from them such that they seemed to behold only terror.

  “We will honor him quietly,” Reyis said again. “Then we prepare to take vengeance upon all the enemies of Rune.”

  Zandrachus Bale gazed out upon the luminous cavern, the Sacred Place beneath the dead city of Cirak. It was as brilliant and beautiful as he remembered, all lush greenery and incandescent walls and sparkling mist thrown from the tumble of its waterfall. Compared to the desolate steppes of Arranan he’d spent the last weeks traversing, it seemed a paradise.

  He sighed.

  A paradise but for the purpose that’s brought us here.

  “It’s alright, Bale,” whispered Lorra, gripping his shoulder. “Your voice will be heard, and will be as strong as any of theirs.”

  Theirs.

  He glanced just ahead, to the metallic forms of Kressan and Sienne setting off hand in hand toward the cavern’s distant end.

  He waited a moment before moving to follow them. As much as the Sentinels had fascinated him in his studies, he did not particularly enjoy their company. That, and he remained troubled by their reluctance to commit to Rune’s defense. They’d voiced anger, but there seemed in that no sense of loyalty.

  “She’s still here,” said Lorra, easing him ahead.

  Bale looked onward, studying the white pillars of the pavilion. In their midst he could see Lyan, tall and golden and menacing. Near her were three other figures, smaller and apparently more human.

  “Who are they?” asked Lorra, pointing.

  Bale shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, squinting to sharpen his vision. “There’s one clad in a green cloak. A Variden, perhaps?”

  They walked on, Bale keeping them half a dozen or so yards behind the twin Sentinels on the winding, whitewashed path toward the pavilion. As he looked ahead to Lyan his heart trembled and his feet felt like stones. He felt her black eyes upon him.

  I am too weak an instrument.

  Lorra pressed his elbow, moving him along. “I’m here with you, Bale, and we’ll not be afraid of them. Remember, they needed you to save them.”

  Her hand wound into his and the feeling of it soothed him. He tugged in a breath and quickened his pace. He resolved to put aside his weaknesses—cowardice most of all—and tackle the task at hand.

  The fate of Rune and all he held dear demanded it.

  “Zandrachus Bale,” came the disembodied voice of Lyan the Just. As before, it sounded inside his head rather than his ears.

  Bale’s eyes joined those of the Sentinel, statuesque at the pavilion’s center. Only a white shift covered her towering form. That and the giant, gold sword strapped to her thigh.

  “You have summoned my sisters,” she continued. “For this I am grateful. I’ve learned your task proved more troubling than I anticipated, and for that you have my apologies.”

  “You are welcome,” Bale mumbled, bowing slightly as he walked.

  Lyan did not reply, instead descending the pavilion to meet Sienne and Kressan. The three Sentinels joined in a brief embrace then moved within the circular structure’s pillars, sharing many whispered words between them.

  Bale’s stride slowed once more and only after the space of several moments did he and Lorra begin to ascend the stairs of the pavilion. He squeezed Lorra’s hand and in return she squeezed his all the more, taking the lead. He glanced to her sharp features, marveling for an instant how she remained so fearless in the company of demigods.

  She looked back to him, her sea-green eyes finding his own, and she smiled. He smiled in return and for an instant felt weightless, moving up the pavilion with ease and prepared to address the Sentinels as Castor’s proxy.

  And then Lyan shook. Just ahead of them, in the pavilion’s center, Lyan shook and the pavilion shook with her. Her every tendon and thew seemed to tense and flex, golden and bulging and appearing ready to burst from her skin. Her obsidian eyes stared upward and her face twisted with a snarl.

  “Thaydorne!” she roared, the sound of it jolting the whole of the cavern. She unsheathed her sword, its long blade scraping from its scabbard.

  Sienne and Kressan withdrew from her. The three humans retreated as well, moving to the pavilion’s edge. Bale gripped Lorra’s hand with all the strength in his own.

  “Thaydorne!” she raged again, screaming toward the far ceiling of the chamber. “Betrayer!”

  She drew back her sword in a wide arc then rushed to a pillar in a single, great stride. She swept the blade and the sword slammed into the stone. With a terrible shrieking sound and a shower of sparks, the stone was cleaved asunder.

  Lyan stepped away as the top half of the pillar toppled and crashed against the pavilion floor. The massive cylinder rolled back and forth for a moment, revealing the shattered stone beneath it, before settling in the depression it had formed.

  “Thaydorne?” hissed the green-cloaked man, tall with wary eyes and a head crowned by receding, gray hair. He took a stride toward the pavilion’s center, a hand lashed around the Coda on his opposite arm.

  Lyan’s chest heaved and she regarded him with narrow eyes. “I have just learned of this, Andrill of the Variden. I have just learned of this and I’m angered, for we have been betrayed. Betrayed by one of our own…” She dropped her sword and the weapon fell with a loud clang. She slumped slightly, flexing her fingers and shaking her arms.

  “Thaydorne?” the Variden Andrill asked again. “How can this be?”

  Lyan looked to him, her lower lip shaking. “My own sisters—his sisters!—were captured and tortured by him when they discovered this.”

  Gold-skinned Kressan nodded and moved near Lyan, looking small and frail beside her. “It is true. Thaydorne is Arranan’s Spider King, and my sister Sienne and I discovered his intent to draw Yrghul’s power from the Godswell. When we did, he nailed us to horrible spikes and bled us for months into the Necrists’ cauldron.”

  Lyan scowled, straightening to her full height several heads taller than them all. “He has betrayed us most of all, Andrill of the Variden.”

  The two other humans came beside the Variden, faces grim. One was a fine-featured Harkanian woman, black-skinned and draped in a robe of yellow linen. Her companion appeared to be a brute from somewhere near the Waters of World’s End, broad-shouldered and foul-faced and clad in slick, silver furs.

  “You must not abide this,” growled the man in furs. “Pastine’s last disciples will not.”

  “No,” Lyan said loudly. “No, I will not abide this. Justice demands Thaydorne be dealt with and destroyed if necessary. He and all the minions of Yrghul who’ve granted their aid. Ready yourselves, followers of Illienne the Light Eternal, for at last we return to Rune.”

  26

  BLOOD TO HEAL THE WOUNDS

  Lannick skulked along the side of a muddy street, prized sword drawn. Though night had fallen upon Riverweave, fires blazed in many pl
aces, lighting the canals, shacks and shanties and playing tricks with shadows. He hissed more than once, mistaking the shifting dark for oncoming soldiers.

  Or Necrists.

  Shouts rang from many places, cries of alarm and groans of the desperate. There came the shuffle of movement, too, with figures dashing about the tight streets.

  Lannick kept close to Arleigh, Cudgen and Ogrund. The four of them had slipped within the city together, among the very last of the deserter army to enter. They’d travelled upon a rickety skiff that drew little notice from the flood of refugees upon the river, and the only soldiers they’d encountered had been those dashing toward Riverweave’s southern edge. From the whispers and cries he’d heard, Lannick learned the enemy approached the city’s south gates, assailing Rune with all the subtlety of a battering ram.

  He shook his head. He reckoned Rune could—and should—win this war. Considering the might of Rune’s forces, General Fane had to be losing the fight through the foulest of intents, and the most important step in turning things around was removing him from command.

  Lannick dearly hoped he’d be able to deliver the final, killing blow. The general had committed the worst of atrocities upon him, and had left the deepest of scars upon his soul.

  Those scars still ached, and Lannick knew he needed blood to heal the wounds.

  “Keep your edges sharp, lad,” he remembered Brugan saying.

  He dragged in a long breath and squeezed his damaged hand to a fist.

  “Ahead,” whispered Arleigh Lay, his chainmail concealed beneath moth-eaten blankets. “More soldiers.”

  “Ours?” hissed Cudgen Ashworn, taking his longbow from his shoulder.

  Arleigh brandished his dagger, the long blade glimmering from nearby firelight. “Can’t tell. Maybe not.” He leaned into the cross-street, peering round the corner, then motioned back with the stump of his other arm. “Stay silent and stay still.”

  They waited long moments, pressed against a building of splintering wood beneath a thatch of knitted reeds. Sounds were difficult to distinguish as havoc ruled the city and distorted perceptions.