The King of the Fallen

by David Dalglish

  “Ahaesarus will move his army out tomorrow, won’t he?” Tessanna finally said. Her tears had apparently run dry.

  “It sounds like that’s the plan. Now that Gregory and Aubrienna are safe, there isn’t any reason to delay it further.”

  His sister-in-law slowly withdrew from his touch, wiping errant strands of hair from her face. She straightened up and met his gaze. A change came over her, and suddenly she was so calm it was disturbing.

  “There will be no victors,” she said. “No joyful outcome. Mother wakes, and she loathes what she sees.”

  “What does that mean?” Harruq asked, a chill coming over him.

  “It means…it means…” She paused and looked to the grass. A deep frown crossed her face. “It means I have to do something I may not like. Something no one will like.”

  “Is it the right thing to do?”

  She stood from the log. Moonlight shone off her cascading hair, and despite her scars, despite her sorrow, Harruq saw her as his brother no doubt saw her: stunningly beautiful, and overwhelmingly powerful.

  “Right? Wrong? Does it matter when the gods who decree what is right and wrong are waging war against one another? I will do what must be done if Dezrel is to survive.” She shuddered. One moment she was a living goddess, another a frail woman. Nothing seemed to mark the switch other than the raw strength of her personality. “What must be done if any of us are to live. Thank you, Harruq. For what it’s worth, I’m…I’m glad you don’t hate me. It will make what follows so much easier.”

  She slipped into the shadows of the trees, avoiding even the moonlight.

  “I would like to be alone now,” her voice spoke from the darkness. “But don’t worry. This time, it is by choice.”

  Harruq trudged back to the army. He passed by human soldiers gathered around campfires. Fearful optimism shone on their faces, the stress of coming battle tempered by hope for a brighter future awaiting on the other side. Eyes lit up when they saw him, the mighty Godslayer, the unbeatable, undefeatable half-orc berserker with twin black blades and strength unmatched. His mere presence was apparently inspiring. Harruq stood tall, let them see the man who had slaughtered the world-conqueror, Thulos. He let them see grim determination and a will that would not break in the face of fallen angels seeking to conquer Dezrel.

  He let them see it until he reached his tent, which he slipped inside to find Aurelia cuddled with a sleeping Aubrienna. Hidden from the world, and from fearful eyes needing his strength, Harruq broke. In the arms of his beloved, he said goodbye to his brother, and wept tears only his precious wife would ever see.

  21

  Should this be a happy moment? wondered Jessilynn.

  She marched at the head of the beast-men divisions. Cheerful shouts rang out from the human encampment as the angels flew overhead, led by a proud Ahaesarus in shining armor. Two armies coming together in preparation for battle. There was hope in that. Yet none of that hope manifested in Jessilynn’s own heart.

  “Such grimness on the face of a human so young,” said Dieredon. He marched beside her, leading Sonowin by the reins. The elf gestured to the humans following the boy king, all of whom lifted their arms and clapped at the sight of so many angels. “Do you not share their mirth?”

  Jessilynn glanced over her shoulder at the wolf-men, hyena-men, and bird-men obediently marching under a vague promise of a new home.

  “No. I share theirs.”

  The next hour was chaos. The human soldiers granted by Lord Eston were eager to make camp with their fellow refugees from Mordeina. The beast-men set up their section as always, which for many meant little more than setting fires and smoothing out dirt and grass.

  Jessilynn separated from Dieredon and wandered throughout the beast-men factions, knowing she should return to the Mordan side but unable to force herself. There were people and faces there she felt nervous to meet. Would any ask about her failure at the Castle of the Yellow Rose? Would she be forced to relive her imprisonment at the hands of the wolf brothers? Her pulse quickened at the memory of Manfeaster and Moonslayer, and so she found every excuse to remain with the occasional grunts and unwelcome glares of the beast-men.

  Hiding would not work forever, though. Sonowin’s shadow flew overhead, followed by Dieredon landing lightly on his feet a moment later.

  “There you are,” the elf said. “Ahaesarus is already plotting tomorrow’s battle with the boy king’s retinue.”

  “His retinue?”

  “The Godslayer and his little band of Eschaton, mostly,” the elf admitted. “A friend of yours is there, too. Come with me, Jessilynn. You should be proud of all you have accomplished since becoming my ward.”

  “I killed hundreds of beast-men whose kin and friends now wage war under an angelic banner. I don’t feel much pride in me.”

  It was a false complaint meant to hide her true fear. Her bow. Her arrows. Would any notice? And what would they say or do if they did? Her shaken faith in Ashhur embarrassed her deeply, and no matter how she tried to think matters through, she felt intense shame in her spiritual failure.

  “I’m not asking you to brag,” Dieredon said. “I’m asking you to come with me because Jerico specifically requested he see you. You’re his student, and he worried greatly for your safety during our, shall we say, adventures in the north.”

  Hearing her teacher’s name, and his desire to speak with her, only quadrupled her shame. Ashhur help her, must she confess her doubts and failures to one of her god’s most accomplished heroes?

  “If you insist,” she said grudgingly.

  The army’s leadership were positioned atop the nearest hill, which wasn’t much of a hill at all. To help cordon it off from the rest of the army, soldiers had pounded a half-dozen spikes at the hill’s base and strung them with rope. A lone soldier guarded the ‘entrance’ gap, and he lifted a hand when he saw Jessilynn and Dieredon approaching.

  “Hold up now,” the soldier said. “Ahaesarus and the Godslayer are in a meeting.”

  “And I’m a friend of Ahaesarus,” Jessilynn responded.

  “Don’t mean I should let you go through.” The man dropped a hand to his sheathed sword. “Back off. I have my orders.”

  Jessilynn didn’t acknowledge the threat. She barely felt anything more than mild annoyance. “I am a Paladin of Ashhur. And I shall pass.”

  She strode past him, practically daring the stunned man to strike at her. Dieredon grinned as he followed, and she heard him offer mild consolation.

  “No hard feelings, human, but you truly don’t scare her.”

  A large brown tent fluttered at the crest of the hill. Before its front flaps was a wooden table that looked comically small given how many leaned over it. Maps of Dezrel were stacked atop the table, along with tokens she assumed represented the various factions of Ahaesarus’s forces, as well as those Azariah had at his disposal.

  Jessilynn froze in place just outside their ring. Though her time with Dieredon had helped grow her confidence, she still felt overwhelmed by those present. Before her were legends of Dezrel, and though she had never met most of them, she knew them by reputation alone. Harruq Tun, a mountain of muscle and leather armor, towered over all but Ahaesarus. His elven wife Aurelia stood beside him, a stunning picture of beauty and elegance. Those two alone had been the stars of the many stories Jerico and Lathaar had told.

  Speaking of Jerico, he too discussed preparations, looking infinitely more tired than he ever had during their lessons at the Citadel. A yellow-garbed wizard, most certainly Tarlak Eschaton, chatted beside him, gesticulating wildly with his hands as he argued. Even Tessanna Delone was there, standing quietly apart from the rest. At least that’s who Jessilynn assumed the dark-eyed woman with black hair stretching down to her ankles must be.

  “Forgive our intrusion,” Dieredon said, loud enough to draw attention away from the discussion of troops and movements. Harruq was the first to notice, and the half-orc forced a
smile.

  “Hey, it’s my favorite cranky and stubborn elf,” he said, then winked at Aurelia. “At least, the most cranky and stubborn elf that I’m not married to.”

  “Yet,” Dieredon said. “Give me time.”

  Jerico glanced up from the map, and upon seeing Jessilynn he jolted as if struck by a thunderbolt.

  “Jessilynn,” he said, stepping away from the table. She rooted in place, and it seemed time itself slowed to a crawl. Not that long ago, she’d have broken down in tears at seeing such a familiar face. Her memories of training and study threatened to overwhelm her, and she felt an intense desire to run to the older man and collapse into his arms, to receive his comfort, his reaffirmation. Instead, she thrust back her shoulders, refusing to flinch or succumb to her emotions. Let him see her stand tall. Let her bear with pride the scars the wolf-men had carved upon her face.

  Yet it wasn’t she who broke down, but Jerico. The older man laughed even as tears began to fall. He sprinted the distance between them.

  “I know only pieces of your story,” he said as he wrapped her in an embrace. “But praise Ashhur, you lived. You survived. I wasn’t sure I could endure losing another.”

  “Another?” she asked, her entire body turning stiff.

  Jerico glanced over her shoulder, and she heard a swish of leather as Dieredon bowed.

  “I shall give you two your privacy,” the elf said.

  The paladin released his hold on her. He stared silently into the distance a moment before shaking his head and walking the other direction, away from those gathered around, discussing war over their table covered with maps and tokens.

  “Come,” he said. “I would not have others overhear.”

  Jessilynn followed him down the hill and past the barricade. For several minutes they walked with him in the lead, winding their way through the scattered encampment. Neither spoke. With each step, her dread grew. Questions she dared not ask pulsed through her mind, giving more fuel to her barely-controlled panic.

  “I suppose I’ve stalled long enough,” Jerico said once they were alone. He’d found a spot where two hills crested into one another, forming a gentle curvature lined with thorned bushes that might produce fruit come spring. Jerico stood before those bushes, armored hand gently brushing the thorns, and fell silent. Jessilynn gave him a chance to address her first, but when the normally boisterous man remained silent, she asked the question that had bothered her most.

  “Jerico, why do you carry Lathaar’s sword at your hip instead of Bonebreaker?”

  Jerico snapped his fist shut, crushing the bush’s thin little branches. “Because Lathaar no longer can. He’s gone. The entire Citadel...it’s collapsed. Fallen. And I think it’s my fault that it did.”

  Whatever joy Jessilynn had felt at seeing Jerico alive and well shriveled and died. Again, she felt the need for tears, yet her insides were so deadened, so numb, she could only stare in shock.

  “How?” she asked. That single word was all she could manage.

  The other paladin crossed his arms and he closed his eyes. They remained closed when he spoke. Despair hung heavy on his every syllable.

  “Betrayed. Stabbed in the back by our own students. When the fallen came for Aubrienna and Gregory, instead of fighting for them, instead of relying on Ashhur to protect those we loved, they...” He drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. At last his eyes opened, and it seemed he’d gathered himself, if only for her sake. “I wasn’t there, damn it. I confronted them afterwards. I demanded they show me their faith. They didn’t. And every single one that couldn’t, every single naked blade, I...I killed them, Jessilynn. My own students. All of them. Only Elrath and Mal survived, the only two willing to stand alongside Lathaar and insist the betrayal was wrong.”

  Jessilynn’s dread turned to horror. These students he spoke of, they were her friends, the only family she’d ever known since she arrived at the Citadel as an orphan.

  “You murdered them.”

  “I avenged my dearest friend and brother,” Jerico insisted. “Would you judge me, too?”

  Jessilynn pulled her bow off her shoulder and held it before her. Her fingers plucked the string. She showed the lack of light, the absence of her own faith.

  “Am I next?” she asked. “Will you slay me for my own doubts?”

  “You didn’t betray Lathaar. You didn’t hand two children over to murderers to use as hostages.”

  “Not those sins, no, but countless others. Answer me, Jerico. Is my life now forfeit?”

  Jerico slowly drew his sword...or was it Lathaar’s sword? She froze, for the first time in her life doubting the decision of a man she had idolized as a child. Jerico took the sword, flipped it in his grasp, and stabbed it into the soft earth. Next came his enormous shield, which he pulled off his back and held firmly tucked into his grasp so that she might look upon its surface.

  His shield. His plain, light-less shield.

  “No, Jessilynn,” he said. “For I would have to take my own life first.”

  She stared at that slanted chunk of metal upon which she had witnessed bathed in holy light countless times before. Deep inside, she felt far too much of herself dying. The grief and shock and horror melded together into a cage locked about her heart. What did it mean? What did any of it mean?

  “Have we abandoned Ashhur?” she asked. “Or are we the abandoned?”

  The silence between them shouted an answer neither wished to accept.

  Jessilynn met the tired gaze of her teacher. There was distance between them, a mutual understanding that went unspoken. All her childhood, she had prayed to be a hero like her cherished mentors. To become a legend of faith and power who stood against the forces of evil. Now she knew what it truly meant to be a hero. She had fought, and bled, and endured. Many lives had fallen to her bow, though that number paled in comparison to how many had been done in by Jerico’s mace and shield. They recognized it in one another. They felt the weight of a thousand trials suffered, and it formed a gulf between them. It saddled them with exhaustion. It broke them with loss and sorrow.

  Before her was the Jerico the stories never told. Victory and heroics didn’t replace the dead. It didn’t erase the pain or salve the hurt that came upon remembering the faces of those who were lost. She saw that now. She felt it in her bones. She knew it in the rubble of the Citadel, rebuilt no longer.

  Knowing this, and accepting it, were still two different things.

  “I saw Darius,” she blurted out before her teacher could leave. “I know it sounds like I’m crazy, but I saw him. He spoke to me, and he helped me. He said to – to tell you to hurry up and die so he can show you a spot by a lake.”

  Jerico slung his shield over his back. He glanced aside, and a smile spread across his face despite his exhaustion and sorrow.

  “Sitting around hoping I’ll die? Some friend he is.”

  “I think it was a joke.”

  “I know it’s a joke,” Jerico said. He grabbed his sword, wiped it clean of dirt, and slammed it into its sheath. “He was just never good at them. Ashhur help me, I miss that idiot.” The paladin chuckled, his laughter false, the sorrow in his eyes so very real. “It’s a shame he’s not with us, because I think we could all use the help of a real paladin tomorrow. At least there’s a silver lining. If things go as it looks like, given how badly we’re outnumbered, well...that bastard’s about to get his wish.”

  22

  Harruq checked the buckles of his armor one last time with Aurelia’s help. They readied themselves at the rear of the army while soldiers scurried about the grassland like ants whose anthill had just been kicked.

  “I should be able to protect you with my magic, so long as you don’t do anything too stupid or reckless,” his wife said, cinching the one of his pauldrons tighter.

  “Have you ever seen me in a fight?” he asked.

  She kissed his nose. “Yes. Hence my request.”

  The air
was electric. Both armies marched toward one another, to collide on the chosen field of battle. The road leading between the Castle of Roses and Mordeina was flat and well-traveled, and it was in the surrounding meadow, on what Harruq had been told was known as Hemman Fields, that they would meet. The ground was firm and flat but for small little bumps of hills that would make perfect vantage points for each side’s perspective leaders.

  A good place to murder each other, thought Harruq. How grim was his life that he’d so calmly analyze a place where thousands were about to die and declare it ‘good’?

  The sound of wings was his only warning for Ahaesarus’s arrival from the air. The angel landed beside him.

  “Good, you appear ready,” he said, looking Harruq over. “Come with me. So far as I am concerned, you are still steward for Gregory Copernus. You should bear witness to Azariah’s answer.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, me meeting him,” Harruq said. “Not after what he did to Aubby, and to my brother.”

  “You’ll keep your swords sheathed and your temper in check,” the angel said, his tone brooking no argument. “Walk with me.”

  Harruq swallowed down the rest of his complaints. Just part of the joys of being the Godslayer. Still, he couldn’t deny the potential pleasure in seeing Azariah’s reaction. Whatever the reason, the angel had been obsessed with killing him. Reminding Azariah he’d been outwitted could at least provide some measure of enjoyment.

  “Stay safe,” Aurelia said, and kissed his cheek.

  “Not good enough,” Harruq said. He swept her up and pulled her close for a kiss on the lips. He let the kiss linger, grinning when he heard a few of the nearby soldiers hoot and holler. He tipped his wife even further back. Might as well give them all a bit of a show.