Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  Defenders of the Valley

  Heroes of the Valley, Volume 1

  K.J. Coble

  Published by Haymore House Publishing, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  DEFENDERS OF THE VALLEY

  First edition. August 26, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 K.J. Coble.

  ISBN: 979-8201555245

  Written by K.J. Coble.

  Also by K.J. Coble

  Hell's Jesters

  Hell's Jesters

  Cry Havoc

  Rebel Hell

  Heroes of the Valley

  Defenders of the Valley

  Blood in the Valley (Coming Soon)

  Stand in the Valley (Coming Soon)

  The Quintorius Chronicles

  Lord of Exiles

  Legion of Exiles

  Republic of Exiles

  The Vothan Guard

  The Tome of Flesh

  Standalone

  Magic Fire - Metal Storm

  The Shadows of Maunathyrr

  Ashes of Freedom

  Beyond the Bulwarks

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By K.J. Coble

  Dedication

  Prologue | Heroes Fall

  Chapter One | Eredynn

  Chapter Two | Shadows and Saviors

  Chapter Three | Journeys

  Chapter Four | Shadows Lengthen

  Chapter Five | Shadows Advance

  Chapter Six | Delivered from Darkness

  Chapter Seven | Regroupings

  Chapter Eight | Arrivals

  Chapter Nine | Light at the End of the Tunnel

  Chapter Ten | Shadows Gather Anew

  Chapter Eleven | Councils of War

  Chapter Twelve | Victories of Light and Shadow

  Chapter Thirteen | Re-births

  Epilogue | Villains Rise

  Sign up for K.J. Coble's Mailing List

  Further Reading: Lord of Exiles

  About the Author

  To my old-school role-playing crew, for late nights and flat beers and gaming tomes stinking of stale cigarette smoke.

  And for stories I'm still telling.

  Prologue

  Heroes Fall

  Illah spurred Whisper through night-enveloped wood, the trees thrumming with malice around them. Buds swollen with early spring shook loose as if fall had returned in a heartbeat. The familiar chirp of night birds, the drowsy chorus of insects, the very pulse of life and nature to which warrior-priests of the Yntuil Order were so attuned stilled before a thousand-throated howl of frenzy.

  The Skinners are on the rampage, Illah thought. The Skinners—known for their habit of donning the stripped flesh of defeated foes—had been quiet of late. Their scattered tribes, returned from the Glittran Wastes to the northern reaches of the Remordan Valley for its plentiful game, had limited their seasonal depredations to one another. What can have set them to aggression so suddenly?

  Illah burst from the deer trail onto the main road in a shower of nettles and wrenched Whisper north for the Watch Tower of the Order. No moon contested the stars for the sky, but quivering orange-yellow glare cast living shadows through the trees. The wintry scent of frost on foliage gave way before the pitch-stink of a large building set to flames.

  Hyrus and the gods help us! Illah kicked heels against Whisper’s flanks, drove the dappled gray to a snorting gallop.

  A shape materialized to Illah’s right, sound and smell betraying another rider on a strong, fast mount, armed and moving to intersect her path ahead. She released the reins with her right hand, reached under her left to bring her saber singing from its sheath. But a familiar whistle cut the night. Illah slowed with a relieved grin and answered the Yntuil call with one of her own.

  Lonadiel erupted onto the rode at her side, already driving his pale Fearless at a reckless rate. He met her gaze with blue eyes gone icy and angular, elfin features pinching about a thin-lipped mouth. He wore full Yntuil battle-array, leather lamellar armor dyed sky blue and chased with silver, feathered helm strapped at the chin. Illah wondered how he’d gotten prepared so quickly. They’d been ranging south of the Watch Tower for the better part of a week and had seen nothing to prepare them for the anarchy now set loose.

  “It’s the Skinners!” Illah called. “It has to be! Did your contacts among the tribes speak of any such move?”

  Lonadiel shook his head. Something about the set of his jaw, his evasive gaze sent a jolt through her nerves. She knew him better than any of the Order—too well, most would say; their sweep of the south woods had been as much an excuse to be together, away from the prying eyes of strict masters.

  Cyan light lashed the sky, followed by a crash. Whisper bucked and squealed as Illah sawed on the reins to get her under control. Lonadiel wheeled Fearless about and put a hand to Whisper’s neck, murmured words of calm that quickly settled the horse.

  “That was no incendiary!” Illah said, the explosion lingering like aftershock on her nerves. “And the Skinners have no such thing! That was sorcery!”

  “Illah...” Lonadiel began to say, his face paled to a spectral pallor.

  “What?” Fear made Illah’s voice harsh. “What is it you’re feeling? Did your contacts say something?”

  Lonadiel cast a glance towards the nervous flicker of flames to the north. Among the Yntuil, he alone had forged something of a relationship with the turbulent tribes, had walked among them, earned even something of a respect from their chieftains. What was he not saying? By the gods, had he missed something, some sign? Does he know it?

  “Lonadiel, whatever it is, you must tell me!” Illah put a hand on the elf’s forearm and forced him to look at her. “If you made a mistake, you know you can—”

  “There was no mistake,” he said with a finality that clamped unexplained talons of fear about Illah’s heart. “Illah, I—”

  Another detonation ripped the north, a fork of unearthly light arching skyward to mock the stars before dissipating with a crackle. Voices roared triumph and horns sounded, the Skinners’ Horns of the Hunt.

  Whisper whinnied again and Illah clenched her teeth. “We have no time for this!” She wrenched Whisper about and spurred the steed forth.

  “Illah, wait!”

  Firelight swelled ahead, illuminating a column of smoke distending into artificial overcast as it reached thin air high above. The woods fell away and Illah reached the low ridge that overlooked the Watch Tower. Whisper reared as they crested the rise and Illah looked down, disbelieving, at the place she had called home.

  The Watch Tower of the Yntuil, the outpost from which the elfin order maintained its ages-old vigil over the Remordan Valley, squatted on a low hill below. Sheer, octagonal walls, crafted from gray, blue-speckled limestone common of the region made assault upon it insane.

  But that was exactly what the Skinners were attempting, a sea of them frothing about its base. Smoke bled from the Tower’s single entrance, flecks of lightning dancing about the jagged, blackened hole bitten from the once impervious double, steel-banded doors. The slit windows of the ground level glowed from within with flames that silhouetted struggling forms. Sharp challenges and barked Yntuil orders answered harsh cries of barbarian fury. Crashing steel rose above it all.

  “By Hyrus!” Illah exclaimed, struggled to keep Whisper under control. Lonadiel came up at her side and halted with the firelight painting hard shadows in his gaunt face. “They’ve penetrated!” she called to him. “By the gods, they’re inside!”

  Lonadiel simply nodded.

  The clen
ching about Illah’s heart worsened. “What are you—” she swallowed back building dread “—what are we going to do?”

  Lonadiel looked at her, his expression gone cold with something that could have been self-loathing.

  “We’re going to do nothing.”

  Shock froze Illah’s retort in her throat.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here.” Lonadiel shook his head. “It’s my fault; another mistake. Barbarians can’t do anything right. The tower was already to have been sacked.”

  “What are you saying?” Illah could barely manage a croak, her head—her world—spinning into confusion.

  The forest rustled behind them. Illah wheeled Whisper about, her saber brought instinctively to the ready. A line of figures emerged from the tree line, distant firelight illuminating leathery vests, clubs of wood and bone, flint-tipped spears, occasional glints of chain mail and swords in the fists of the more menacing. Strange visages regarded her, crinkled, dried masks drawn over barbarian features, eyes staring murder through skin peeled from the skulls of the defeated dead. The line bent at the flanks, closed into a semicircle around the pair of Yntuil.

  “Lonadiel...”

  “Though I doubt you will believe it, I am sorry, Illah,” he replied. Lonadiel glanced at the Skinners, at a particularly huge and well-armed brute that might have been their leader. “Take her alive.”

  With a collective snarl, the barbarians rushed Illah.

  Whisper reared without a command from her stunned rider, hooves lashing out, glancing off one Skinner’s skull, gashing through another’s hideous mask. Training took over, Illah’s saber cleaving an arch through the air that parted a barbarian’s hand from his wrist as he hacked at her with a crude sickle.

  She angled Whisper to the right, driving the horse for the flank of the Skinners’ line, the best chance of escape before their bristling circle closed about her. A barbarian club glanced off her left leg with a numbing jolt. Illah’s saber stabbed over Whisper’s back into the attacker’s face and the brute fell away with a shriek, blood fanning through cupped hands.

  Illah sawed the reins to the left, angling for a thin point in the circle. She parried a cudgel blow, her blade parting its bone handle. Her reverse stroke opened a barbarian shoulder in a spray of blood droplets that glittered ruby-like in the glow of the burning Watch Tower. Something crashed into her from behind, another Skinner vaulted halfway onto Whisper’s back behind her, dirty fingers fumbling to grip her hair. She turned in the saddle, right elbow shooting backwards into the barbarian’s face with a crackle of collapsed cartilage. But Whisper reared, screaming, as another Skinner got a grip on her bridle. Balance went and Illah tumbled backwards.

  Illah hit the ground at a roll and came up in a swing that opened a barbarian’s belly. She flashed past the man, on his knees with coils of intestine steaming into the chill night air. She had to keep moving, keep them off balance.

  Another Skinner stepped into her path, a huge mass of chain mail and notched sword, claimed from a past victim and a symbol of tribal status. He feinted left then stabbed, expecting the move to have exposed Illah’s right flank. But Illah’s saber parried, steel lightening redirecting the thrust away and opening the barbarian’s flank instead. He stumbled to one knee and never regained footing, Illah’s answering stroke cleaving his torso at the thinly-armored point under the armpit.

  Motion in the corner of her eye caused Illah to shrug right, away from an incoming blow. A wood bludgeon fashioned with spikes of chipped flint whistled past her ear but the narrow escape threw her into the path of another blow, a bone club glancing off her shoulder. She spun, allowing the impact to turn her and her saber in a deadly pirouette that sliced across her attacker’s chest from nipple to shoulder. She settled into a half-crouch, saber clutched by her left hip at a low guard.

  Illah met Lonadiel’s gaze over the wave of Skinners for a moment. The Yntuil sat passively atop Fearless, eyes narrowed, face tugged into a half-smile, as though admiring a pupil’s blossoming talent. Rage snarled through her veins, hot jets of betrayal driving her forward into the barbarian mass. Thoughts of escape vanished. A mindless desire for some kind of reckoning overrode training or self-preservation.

  “Why?” she screamed as she cut down a Skinner and sidestepped another’s overhand chop. She reversed course, lunging behind the second attacker and raking his back with the edge of her saber. For a moment, a gap opened between her and her former comrade—and more than that, so much more, she had thought. She hurtled into the hole.

  “Why!?!”

  A spear-wielding Skinner stepped across Illah’s path. She lost a half step parrying his thrust upwards then slicing through his leather jerkin. A barbarian sword cut under her right guard and slashed across her ribs. She staggered to one knee, shocked at the pain, remembering she was un-armored. Her backhanded swing put Yntuil steel into the attacker’s shin but caught on bone, the man’s reflexive flinch from the blow nearly dragging the saber from her grasp.

  Something blasted off the side of her head, knocking her to her elbows. Wrenching her blade free of the squalling Skinner’s leg, she straightened and stabbed backwards over her left shoulder, sank the point deeply into a gurgling barbarian chest.

  The knobby head of a bone cub smashed into her cheek, slammed her face-first into the grass, blood exploding from her nose. She knocked the club-wielder’s feet out from under him with a leg-sweep but another blow landed on her shoulder blade, drove her again into the dew-damp ground. She struggled to rise but an avalanche of impacts hammered her down.

  “Alive, I said!” Lonadiel’s voice bit through the din with sudden alarm.

  Illah looked up through a fan of blood-matted hair. Lonadiel cantered forward, parting the Skinners before him, naked saber in his hand. Illah gripped her sword and tried to rise. A boot slammed down on the back of her neck, smothering her into the dirt. She wrenched her face sideways, determined to stare accusation at the traitor to the last.

  A shriek pierced the night and Skinners exploded away from the dappled mass of Whisper, careening into their midst. Blade and bludgeon rained against her foamed, blood-streaked flanks. A Skinner went tumbling under her hooves, bones breaking with a sound like trampled sticks. The others sprayed back from the steed. Lonadiel was nearly thrown as Fearless reared, snorting in panic at the smell of horse blood and animal terror.

  Illah whistled a short pattern and Whisper plunged through the Skinners, hurtled towards her master. Illah gripped her saber and flicked it backwards blindly. She felt the flat of the blade slap the belly of the barbarian pinning her, felt the brute jerk back in surprise, his weight on her eased. She erupted to her knees, throwing the Skinner back, and pivoted, from a crouch, brought her sword around in a slash that passed through the calf of the barbarian’s still-planted left leg. The man dropped with a grunt of shock.

  Whisper galloped past Illah. She reached out her free hand and caught the horse’s stirrup, barely kept her grip as she was dragged free of the barbarian tangle. Grass, weeds and rocks raked her underside as she let herself be carried free. Blows rattled across her body, one Skinner getting a momentary grip on her ankle before a kick jolted him loose. She ignored pain, ignored droplets of Whisper’s blood and spume speckling her as the animal labored to pull her to freedom. Howls of barbarian frustration followed them.

  Distantly, Illah heard Lonadiel roaring her name.

  THE FINAL CRIES OF agony faded and steel rang no longer. Fires crackled down to sullen flickers in settling smoke. The last stand of the Yntuil was finished.

  The Skinners opened a grudging path for Lonadiel as he cantered through the blasted entrance to the fallen Watch Tower. Flecks of sorcery, cooled to a sullen red, crackled at the jagged edges of the demolished doors, stung his skin with random spats of spark. The former Yntuil’s eyes watered in the caustic haze of smoke, ozone bite of expended magic, and coppery death.

  And perhaps with a hint of regret.

  Slain Yntuil littere
d the crimson-spattered stones of the entry hall, fallen in clumps, occasionally alone, most often in pairs—as the Yntuil fought, in teams that were as close as kin; as close, sometimes, as lovers. Lonadiel didn’t allow his gaze to linger too long on familiar faces. Barbarian fury had mangled many beyond normal recognition, but Lonadiel knew them all; the lithe Ataeus sisters, sagging back-to-back with their familial blood pooled together, the aged Ornellus sprawled inches from his youthful pupil, Tai—killed apparently in the act of defending the mortally wounded novice to the Order. Flames frothed from the stables. A pair of feet protruded from the arched entryway. That would be Gannae, Master of Steeds. A Skinner lingered near the body, fastening something to a chain that closer observation revealed as a bloody string of elf ears.

  Lonadiel winced, swallowed once, and focused his eyes ahead, to the stairs at the far side of the chamber that ascended to the inner sanctums of the Order. Scarred, elder Skinners, weighted with plunder that was their right as the most vicious of their tribes, lined the steps. They were bowing with deference that belied their collective stature as a robed figure descended between them.

  “I am told your other half escaped,” the man said as he reached the bottom and halted. Robes of black velvet, the borders worked with runes of silver-thread, made the man no petty, bones-reading shaman of the barbarians. He leaned on a staff of obsidian capped with a head of pewter hammered into the likeness of winged skull. A hand glittering with rings drew back his cowl, revealing cleanly-shaven features of shining ebony, the exotic shades of mysterious, ancient Verrax, half a continent away.

  “The barbarians botched it,” Lonadiel answered to growls of disapproval from the elders. He glared challenge at them but didn’t dismount. “And she is, after all, Yntuil.”

  “Still some pride at the old Order?” The wizard glanced at elfin corpses and shook his head with a chuckle. “One wonders at your dedication to our cause.”