Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  But standing with these people, this strange little circle of friends into which she had fallen, Illah found the strength to hope.

  Chapter Twelve

  Victories of Light and Shadow

  The gorge thundered with drums. Groon Blood-Drinker grinned, feeling the rhythm reverberate in time to the hammer of his pulse while the horns of a dozen tribes blared and thousands of goblinoid throats bawled themselves hoarse. They were a force of nature, gathering to destroy.

  Brathug Foulstench hammered the boulder in front of him, drooling in his mania to attack. He whirled to Groon, eyes widened to yellow rings around enormously-dilated pupils of mindless black. “How much longer do we wait?” he demanded.

  Groon cast his gaze to sun dipping behind the crags of the Labyrinthines. Not quite dusk. He turned to Akrak behind him. The shaman stood with arms wide and his face lifted to the heavens, swaying with eyes closed and expression slack in approaching ecstasy. No help there...

  “It will soon be sundown,” Groon replied. “With the fall of night our hammer falls.”

  “Too long!” Foulstench snapped, but didn’t leave his spot at Groon’s side.

  Groon shrugged. Night brought the the nocturnal goblinoids to the peak of their power, when the hateful glare of the sun no longer sapped their strength and their superior vision in the dark provided its own advantages. But his head rang with the rising current of some power he no longer questioned, merely accepted. He knew, this close to the source of the thing that had called them across hundreds of miles, even the sun could not dissuade his horde.

  Shrieks rose from the right of the mass crowded into the gorge below the cave entrance. A band of goblins, a minor tribe bearing a pole mounted with a giant snake’s skull, sprang forth from the main body and scrambled up through the rocks. Howls of encouragement followed and knots of other tribes began to split off, most at a cautious trot, watching to see their fellows’ progress.

  “Curse them!” Groon bellowed. “If any of them survive, they die at my hand for their defiance!”

  The breakaways reached the dwarf palisade. Steel screamed and blood ran. Groon saw a few dwarves mount the top of their barrier to hew into goblin flesh. A scattering of arrows rose towards the cave, driving them back into cover.

  Groon glanced over his shoulder at the Blood-Drinkers, the hobgoblin warband clustered in a disciplined block, but their eyes shining for battle. Behind them, the ogres, who Groon had corralled near his banner to serve as his personal shock troopers, growled in low bass notes felt in the stomach, the ten-foot giants stomping like horses itchy for the charge. Groon could hold them back if the rest of horde’s cohesion frayed but knew that if he did, they may never follow him anywhere again.

  To Groon’s left, trolls slobbered, tiny red eyes in deep, shadowy sockets flaring to sparks while fang-lined mouths opened and clamped shut in anticipation of a feast. They’d feed on goblin as quickly as they’d slurp a dwarf’s bones clean. The smell of blood on the rocks above finally got the better of them and the gangly, bark-skinned beasts burst free of the line to clamber upslope. Seeing their ancestral allies gone, the Fenskulkers, hot to avenge their repulse of the previous night, erupted after them.

  Brathug screamed and pulled out his hair in an attempt to remain composed at his warlord’s side. Unable to resist the inevitable and his own instincts, Groon gave in and mounted the rocks before him, turned to face his warriors with sword drawn.

  “Let no goblin vermin pierce the dwarves’ line before a Blood-Drinker does!”

  Like an avalanche, the horde poured towards battle, just as irreversible and just as unstoppable.

  ON ALL FOURS, SARCHA cleared the dust from a pattern carved into the floor with fingertips long-blackened from the work of her ritual. The etching was an intricate zig-zag grid, connected tiny gems embedded in the floor to represent stars of a constellation that no longer existed, had been altered by gods punishing a world that had forsaken them in ages past.

  She rose unsteadily to her feet, knees rubbed raw by nearly a day of labor, filth caked over sweat. Her eyes throbbed from working in the poor light of dozens of candles she’d kept religiously lit; all in accordance with the ritual drilled into her over months by co-conspirators in Thyrr. She looked around. All seemed to be in readiness. The statues of the Vuls watched with their jeweled eyes in mute approval.

  Sarcha looked upon the unrisen god in the sarcaphogus. She’d thrown aside the lid early in the ritual and lined the rim with candles of red wax that cast the corpse within in a bloody hue. The body lay mummified in time-blackened linens, hands crossed over the breast shrunken to gnarled claws, mouth drawn open millennia ago in some silent scream.

  She’d done everything the cult of fellow low-borne Thyrrian aristocrats had told her, having gleaned the process from the same lost parchments and tomes within which the map had been found. They’d chosen her as the youngest, the most charming, the most driven, and the most devious.

  Everything was ready; except for the final invitation to the entity that dwelt here, locked in the prison of a moldering corpse.

  Deep dwarven shouts echoed down the passage at her back. She smiled and prepared herself, drawing her cloak about her and hiding her now naked knife in a sleeve. She unidid a bag of what would appear to the casual observer to be dust and held it in her free hand as she turned to greet her unwitting accomplices.

  “Lady Sarcha!” Clegg said breathlessly as he staggered into the chamber, splashed with goblin gore, his axe notched and his armor battered. A second dwarf bearing a torch followed him. Sarcha frowned to herself and quickly recalculated. “It is time,” Clegg said. “We must go! The goblins are attacking in force but the side passage is...” The dwarf trailed off, blood-spattered brows furrowing as he looked around.

  “Yes, it is time, Clegg,” Sarcha said, stepping towards him.

  Clegg met her gaze and she saw the last whisps of the charm she’d held over him fade as anger and the fire of betrayal lit his eyes. “What goes on here?” he asked through gritted teeth, hefting his axe to the ready.

  “This.”

  Sarcha threw the bag of dust into Clegg’s face. At the same time, she spat an arcane word only weeks of instruction at the tutelage of a wizard had allowed her unskilled mouth to form. Clegg snorted and blinked as the cloud settled over him. The rage surged back into his face after a moment of confusion, but gave way before agony as he howled and dropped to the floor, clawing at his skin and eyes as the dust took on an ember glow and seared into them.

  The second dwarf roared and and started towards her with raised warhammer. Sarcha stepped back and threw her cloak open, whispering the command word to the skull brooch now clasped at her throat. Its ruby eyes flared to life and the dwarf froze in midstep, his arms loosening, lowering the hammer. Clegg’s cries didn’t register on his bedazzled expression.

  “Come here,” Sarcha commanded.

  The dwarf trudged towards her, dragging his feet in the only resistance his enthralled mind could muster. Sarcha’s knife flashed from her sleeve. She put it under his beard and flicked it across bare throat. Blood spumed and she flinched away as it painted the sleeve over her upraised arm. The dwarf plopped face-first onto the floor with a long, wet wheeze, twitching as his lifeblood pumped out onto the stone and runneled into the etchings.

  Wiping gore from her eyes, Sarcha stepped over the body and moved on Clegg. The blinded dwarven foreman tried to swing his axe from where he lay on all fours, the blade skittering across stone. Sarcha easily sidestepped the blow and brought her foot down on his wrist. He was a strong brute, though, and broke free without the weapon, scrambled dumbly towards the center of the chamber where he stumbled back to his feet. Eyes seared to black and crimson sought the room for her.

  “Curse you to the hells!” Clegg rasped. “Traitorous witch! Let demons eat out your—”

  Sarcha swept around behind him and sprang, clasping his shoulder with one hand and sawing the knife across his windpipe with
the other. Reflexively, Clegg launched an elbow back, its point smashing into Sarcha’s ribs with a crackle of bone. She fell with a cry, breaths lanced with agony.

  Blood jetting from under his chin, Clegg staggered towards the sarcophagus. His toe caught on an etching and he pitched forward, landing just shy of the casket, his fingetips dragging trails of red down its engraved side.

  Sarcha sobbed for air, tears blurring her vision. But she forgot pain as the air of the room stilled and the strange, damp heat rose to a fiery level that beaded sweat instantly across her flesh. Fighting through the tightening band of agony around her injured torso, she rose back to her feet.

  The flames of the red candles lining the lid of the sarcophagus expanded to four-inch tongues that then sucked inward into the casket, licking across the mummy wrap and setting it afire. The blaze spread, enveloping the corpse, which crumbled and sagged into a glimmering crimson effluvium that rose until it filled the sarcophagus. Crimson brightened to yellow-orange, spats of fire leaping from its surface as if from a pool of liquiescent magma that drooled over the edges. Etchings on the side of the casket sagged and flowed away with the heat. A dribble of the glowing fluid reached Clegg’s body and the stink of his blood faded behind the boiled-fat stink of burning meat.

  Sarcha’s heart flopped over in her chest.

  Something moved in the molten glare of the sarcophagus.

  THE SKINNERS’ HOST poured from the treeline bordering Graystone Glade’s northern edge, the discordant chorus of drums, howls, and the Horns of the Hunt felt as a tangible thing, rippling against the skin like a hard wind. They seethed forth across the grasses, a vast brownish stain, glittering with steel. There was no pause to dress ranks; with the trees behind them, the barbarians’ pace accelerated, punctuated by the rhythmic crash of blades and bludgeons hammered against shield bosses.

  Jayce breathed deep and felt his mouth dry with fear. His heart fluttered; a desperate beat he again inhaled deeply, slowly to control. He closed his eyes and centered himself, extended his mind out into the cosmos and felt the energy sea of the lower planes for ripples disturbing its surface. The otherworldly powers trembled to the massive psychic upheaval of thousands of minds whirling before approaching conflict, but remained otherwise placid.

  The rogue wizard was not yet showing his hand.

  “Hyrus, be with us,” Illah whispered. Jayce opened his eyes to glance at her. “That is even more than they had when the Watch Tower fell,” she said.

  “Stay with me,” Jayce replied.

  The half-elf maiden nodded, bands of muscle drawing the skin taught over her face.

  Jayce glanced over his shoulder at Danelle. His apprentice had acquired a walking stick and was using it to trace a line in the dirt around her, murmuring as she did so. Jayce nodded in approval; she was building up her wards of protection. A pang of emotion bit through his chest, pride and love for the girl he’d nurtured to something so much more than her squalid roots would have promised. He hoped he made it through this to see what she would yet become.

  Screams cut across the field and Jayce turned his attention back to the front.

  The Arhem had sallied forth from the Valley folk’s position again and had shaken out into a thin skirmish line. Trotting forth in seeming nonchalance, the centaurs began their shortbow sniping, muscled arms plucking arrows from quivers, knocking and loosing with machine-like precision. Skinners at the fore of the host raised their round, broad shields but the centaur missiles flicked low, biting shins and thighs, dropping the front ranks with a ripple like wind-stirred wheat. Barbarians behind the fallen men hastened to take their places only to find arrows sprouting from their chests before they could get their own shields up.

  Shrieks of fury split the host and small bands broke off to charge the centaurs. The skirmish line bowed back before the press, Arhem wheeling about and firing half-turned as they skipped ahead of attackers gone completely berserk. Centaurs to either side slowed to let the charging men pass and loosed into unprotected flanks. The breakaway groups withered and came apart, small clots continuing forward in mad sprints to get at any of their tormentors. The centaurs slowed to a leisurely walk, picking off isolated Skinners. Jayce saw Taul Rising-Gale let a Skinner already bristling with arrows get to within a few strides before slamming an arrow into the barbarian’s left eyesocket and dropping the man at his hooves.

  The Skinner main body jostled forth, any semblance of organization discarded as they trampled their dead and dying to reach the centaurs. Taul Rising-Gale wheeled and dashed for the Valley line, shouldering his shortbow and lifting a horn to his lips. Its call could barely be heard over the barbarian roar, but the Arhem responded, peeling back from the host and following their chieftain in flight to the left.

  Jayce nodded to himself. That touch had been Captain Ulomo’s, he knew; the centaur’s signal was not just to call back his own people, but to singal to the Expeditionary Force that the Skinners, now halfway across the field, were well within longbow range. Jayce looked left to see the archers of Andenburgh lift their bent bows and wait, tensed, for the order to release. Jayce didn’t hear the call given – figured the keyed-up archers hadn’t waited, anyway – but first a spattering, then a wave of arrows whirred forth, blackening the sky for a few moments.

  The mass of Skinners retracted in upon itself like a spasming muscle as death rained down. Shields went up over heads as the barbarians clustered together, tightening into an organism of linked plywood, leather, and steel. Skinners caught outside the formation died in screaming, gurgling panic, pierced from above, pierced in the backs as they fled and flopped forward with arms flailing, pierced dozens of times. The host ground to a halt and weathered the steel-tipped storm for a few deadly minutes, shields clattering with hundreds of strikes as Elders struggled to get some control, some coordination. Beyond their mass, hundreds littered the trampled, blood-splashed grass.

  Jayce sampled the currents of the cosmos again, felt nothing. Apparently, the rogue wizard had no intent of aiding his allies. Jayce frowned, knew that could only mean his antagonist waited as he did, for one of them to make the first move.

  The Horns of the Hunt blared anew, in unison this time. The barbarian host lurched to its feet and lumbered forward, boots hammering the ground in time to swords beaten against shields and deep-throated chants, a pulsing crash-rah!-crash-raaah!!! Strain, fear and instinct combined amongst the barbarians to create segments in the formation, groupings around individual elders and champions that gave the host the appearance of a pack of scaled beasts, scuttling forward insect-like as longbow arrows clamoured against them. Skinners continued to go down, but cohesion prevented the wholesale slaughter of before.

  “They’re going to close with us,” Illah said in a forlorn tone. She unsheathed her saber.

  “Easy,” Jayce told her. “You must stay close to me.”

  The Skinners reached the marsh north of the creek and their formation showed signs of breaking as men stumbled calf-deep in muck. A tinny horn sounded to the right and Jayce looked that way to see the gnomes of Kobolon, who had watched the battle kneeling together in a long, thin line, rise to their feet and sight their crossbows. As the Skinners began to splash into the creek and the shield wall split apart, the horn trilled and was lost in the clatter of crossbow strings releasing their tension.

  Bolts flashed into the host at nearly flat trajectories, carried with enough force at barely a hundred yards to punch through shields and the arms holding them up, cleave mail like it wasn’t there. Skinners crumpled, punched through and pinned to kin behind them. The creek went red as the slain dammed it up.

  “Jayce...” Illah gave her saber a testing swing, trembling with pent-up anxiety.

  “Just a little longer,” Jayce replied, feeling his own self-control falter with the many-bodied monstrosity before him, hurt and floundering, but hungering and hating, too.

  The Skinners spilled across the creek, stumbling amongst the blood and ruin, but clamberin
g over, undeterred by the pleas of dying kin. Those Andenburgh archers that had saved a few arrows loosed now in a fitful spray. A second wave of crossbow bolts rived through the Faces now on the south side of the creek and the host quivered as a whole on the edge of collapse. But again, the Horns of the Hunt blared and the fury of those to the rear ground the mass forward.

  With answering horn calls and jeers of rage, the men of the Valley surged downhill to meet the host and grind it back upon the creek. Fishermen of Koen, Graystone, and Dinalol flung themselves upon the barbarians with the wild frenzy of cornered animals. The swordsmen of Eredynn hacked and hewed with equal desperation while the block of the Legion hurled a flurry of javelins and trod downhill with shields locked, spear-points flashing forth to paint themselves crimson. The hillside slickened with blood.

  Now! Jayce called forth the energy of the lower planes, one hand outstretched with the fingers fanned. The other drew forth a tiny mirror he’d carved inscriptions upon and held it at the ready.

  The creek erupted into a river of fire. Cyan flames and smoke smelling of charred meat bubbled up from under the feet of squalling Skinners. The host splintered as the wall of fire divided them, fully a third of the warriors trapped by the blaze on the south side. To the north, the mass backpedaled, men dropping to the ground and rolling to put out the cyan-flecked flames feasting upon them. Their cut-off comrades, feeling the heat prickling across their backsides, lost all cohesion, forgot to fight as a group and battled on as individuals lost.

  The cosmos twitched as if struck a body-blow. A wave of power rose and crested. Jayce looked north in time to see a blister of red fire rise from behind the trees on the battlefield’s far side, distend, and arch across the dusky sky, narrowing into a finger of pure hell come to squash him.