Into the Valley of Death

by Frank Cavallo

Two of the wounded had died over the night, and the matter of their final rites brought the first real discussion of the day. Draeder appeared anxious to move on, and initially ordered them left where they lay. When that met with some protest from Erhard, he further suggested dumping their bodies in the river. Again, Erhard argued with his master, until he finally relented.

  As the others assisted the last surviving wounded man, Walder, to make ready for travel, Felix helped to bury the dead once again. He and Erhard carried one of the bodies out to the edge of the woods, digging a shallow grave in the wet ground just as they’d done the day before. But this time, when Felix put down his spade and lifted the body to lower it into the dirt, Erhard stopped him. Instead, the old sergeant knelt down before his fallen comrade.

  Felix at first assumed it was a moment of solemnity, a final farewell to a lost friend. He bowed his head in a show of sympathy, but Erhard soon disabused him of such sentimental notions.

  The veteran began pulling off the dead soldier’s regalia, first his hooded cloak, surcoat and belt, before unstrapping his iron gauntlets and studded leather jerkin. He looked up at Felix with a wry grin.

  ‘Perhaps you’d be willing to lend a hand,’ he said, ‘Given that this is for your benefit.’

  Felix knelt down too, and Erhard passed him the gauntlets and sword belt from the dead man.

  ‘Put on as much as you can, whatever fits is now yours.’

  ‘I’m not sure I feel right, taking your dead friend’s gear,’ Felix said.

  ‘Where we’re going, you’ll need every bit of it. Trust me, it does him no good to hold on to anything now.’

  Erhard made sure to take every bit of useful material, including a fine pair of woodsman’s boots, several knives, some armour and a chainmail shirt. Felix found that most of it did fit him, and the rest required only a few adjustments.

  ‘I admire what you did back there,’ he said, as he donned the dead man’s attire.

  Erhard seemed confused by the comment.

  ‘What’s that, exactly?’

  ‘You challenged Draeder, in front of the men, no less,’ Felix said. ‘He is your lord, is he not?’

  Erhard nodded, but with a shifting smile that hinted at sarcasm, if not outright resentment.

  ‘He is the son of my lord,’ he said. ‘I indulge him as part of my service to his father, and because I have always done as much for him.’

  ‘So you’ve known the man a long while?’

  ‘Since he was a boy,’ Erhard replied. ‘I’ve served in his father’s livery for more than twenty years now.’

  ‘You watched him grow up then?’

  Erhard scoffed a bit. He looked up from the dour task of grave-digging to cast an eye at Draeder, standing at a distance, with his head held high along the riverside.

  ‘I watched him get older, let me say that,’ he answered. ‘None of us were certain if he would ever grow up.’

  ‘He seems to have done quite well for himself though,’ Felix answered. ‘Sent forth on this official mission by one of the Colleges of Magic.’

  Erhard came to his feet, stuck his shovel into the mud and rested his hands atop the shaft.

  ‘Just between you and I,’ he continued, in a lower voice. ‘We were all more than a little surprised when he returned to these lands recently, fully attired in the mantle of the Amethyst wizards.’

  Felix was intrigued, if not a bit indignant.

  ‘Just like his father, you expected him to fail as well?’

  Erhard shook his head.

  ‘I’ve probably said too much already.’

  Felix put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘If I’m to travel with your party into these haunted woods, and to take up arms with you again, do I not deserve to know at least a little of what you do?’

  Erhard agreed.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell, really,’ he said. ‘I’ll only say that… Draeder was simply never the type to follow through with anything. If there was an easy road, you could always count on him to take it.’

  ‘He cheated?’

  ‘He did whatever he needed to do, whatever the situation required to accomplish what he wanted – usually with the least amount of effort. So you can understand that it came as a bit of a shock to me when, after vanishing with no word for several years, he returned not as an acolyte or an apprentice, but having claimed the hard-earned title of a wizard.’

  ‘He does indeed appear to command the winds of magic, does he not?’ Felix said.

  Erhard grimaced.

  ‘Just barely, at times,’ he said, though he seemed to think better of his insult only a moment later. ‘But who am I to judge, I’ve never been fond of mages.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Felix said. ‘At least thus far.’

  They didn’t set off on the trail until mid-morning. But their path soon took them from the banks of the river to the perfectly-fitted masonry of an ancient road. Felix recognized it, for it was the very same road his companions from Wurtbad had taken on their exit from the city. The weathered paving stones seemed to have endured for ages, scarred with the ruts and grooves worn down by centuries of wagon traffic. While choked with weeds and overgrowth, it remained as a silent echo of days past, fading yet defiant of the wilderness into which it led.

  ‘This road goes all the way to Talabheim,’ Draeder said, reading from the map, though he seemed to have memorized the details. ‘We’ll follow it as far as the third marker, that’s as near to the Barren Hills as most ever go. After that, we’ve only this map to guide our way.’

  Felix looked out over the massive expanse that lay ahead of them from the high ground where the old road crested atop a hill. The forest stretched out as far as he could see, a vast expanse of dense, old trees clustered so thick that the vista blended into an ocean of leaves and shadows. He breathed a little deeper as he surveyed the massive, perilous wilds. He felt his heart begin to pound.

  The Great Forest was notorious. Felix couldn’t help but wonder what horrors lurked beneath that dark canopy. It was said to harbour all manner of beasts and rogues, unspeakable and unimaginable.

  Draeder charted their course, following landmarks etched in faded markings on the parchment map, and using the ancient road as a reference. His companions acted as something of a guard, two riding on each side of him and with Ernst Erhard bringing up the rear on his old spotted gelding.

  Just before midday, Draeder fell back from the lead, to ride beside Felix, who had also taken the horse of one of the fallen men. He was now rid of his ruined university attire, garbed more like a woodland tracker or huntsman. He wore a heavy woollen cloak, the hood lowered for travel and clasped at the neck with a brass amulet. A new sword hung at his side, a bandolier of daggers was slung over his iron-studded leather jerkin, and he wore a knife on the side of each boot. Everything stank of sweat and grime, but after a short while, he found the foul odours no longer bothered him, for he was as filthy and unwashed as the dead man whose clothes he now wore anyway.

  He had not taken the fallen soldier’s livery-emblazoned coat however, setting him apart from the other men in the party. It was this decision that he expected Draeder to mention when the wizard came up beside him, looking him over in his new attire. Instead, he asked something completely unexpected.

  ‘So you’re a poet?’ Draeder asked, very much out-of-the-blue.

  ‘I’m a student of verse, yes,’ Felix answered.

  ‘You recite it, but you don’t create it?’

  ‘Oh I do, believe me. It’s just that my own efforts at composition have yet to find the audience they deserve,’ Felix answered. ‘But that is why we study the works of those who have gone before, is it not? To build upon their art and to take it somewhere it has not yet been?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Draeder answered. ‘I happen to know precisely how it feels to be unappreciated in one’
s true calling. And I am something of a student of the written word myself, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The incantations and rites of my schooling are very much like your poems, I imagine,’ Draeder said. ‘In fact, many of them possess a quality not unlike the rhythm of good verse. That is how one commits so many of them to memory, after all.’

  Felix looked over at him, and found Draeder staring back at him with a knowing, almost suspect glare. He suddenly realized that the young wizard might be referring to the ritual he had witnessed the night before, though he was still quite unsure if that was something he was not supposed to have seen. He elected to remain stoic.

  ‘I had never thought to make such a comparison,’ Felix said. ‘Though I must confess, I am rather unfamiliar with any rites of magic or spell-craft, having never seen them employed for myself.’

  He looked back at Draeder with those words, and the wizard’s face changed the moment he said them. His glare softened. He nodded once to Felix; an acknowledgement perhaps of some greater level of trust just now established, or else suspicion erased. It put Felix at ease, at least for a while.

  They came to a peculiar landmark on their third day trekking across the ancient road, a huge rocky spire that rose up from the undergrowth with three points of smooth granite. It looked vaguely like a dragon, stretching its wings as it took flight.

  Draeder brought their party to a halt. He flashed the map so that Felix could see it, pointing to an inscription. Though Felix could not read the runes, he recognized the drawing that accompanied them – a dragon taking flight.

  The men gathered round in a circle of horses at his behest.

  ‘Men of House von Halkern,’ he began. ‘Here we leave the road behind, and we begin our true journey. Beyond this point no woodsmen dare venture. No trails set down by men penetrate this most thickly-grown wilderness. And so it is time to tell you what lies ahead.

  ‘My colleagues of the Amethyst Order have long laboured in the study of reams of ancient manuscripts. They’ve spent years of searching for clues to a quest that has lasted generations. Recent discoveries have led my superiors to one inescapable conclusion: the lost volume called the Book of Ashur rests in a tower secluded deep in the hidden mists of this very forest, north-west of our present location, in a lost valley of the Barren Hills,’ Draeder said.

  ‘The Barren Hills?’ Felix asked. ‘Is that land not cursed?’

  ‘According to some, but the rumours and stories of it are mostly wild tales and outright myth,’ Draeder said, appearing more confident than his comrades.

  ‘That depends on who you ask,’ Erhard added, echoing the palpable unease that had come over the rest of the men. ‘There are those who live amongst these woods who would tell you that the Chaos moon spat upon these lands many years ago, and its noxious spittle turned the once-Green Hills foul. Most everything alive was killed in a single night, and what little did survive was changed.’

  ‘Changed how?’ Felix asked, though he suspected the answer.

  ‘It was said that everything touched by that poison moon’s light grew warped and twisted, plants and animals alike, bent and perverted in ways too horrible to relate,’ Erhard said.

  ‘But I had always heard that the elector count’s men swept through the ruined hill country, seeking to eradicate the vile mutants. Did they not?’ Torsten asked.

  ‘Indeed they tried, but no force of men could ever hope to clear an area this large of so many horrors. No doubt many escaped their blades, and others lurk in the caves and shadowed thickets of the deep woods to this very day,’ Erhard replied.

  ‘That’s comforting,’ Felix added.

  ‘How, may I ask, did this book of yours come to be in such a cursed place to begin with?’ Erhard asked, turning back to Draeder.

  The young wizard seemed perturbed by the question. He answered with a sour expression that hinted he was losing his patience.

  ‘The valley we seek, deep in the Barren Hills, was once the home of a reclusive necromancer,’ he said.

  The men stammered, muttering to each other in hushed tones. The suggestion alone appeared to make them all plainly uncomfortable, agitated in a way uncommon among such imperturbable fighting men.

  Even Erhard, as stalwart a soldier as Felix had ever met, seemed suddenly apprehensive. He furrowed his brow and shook his head, stepping back a pace in unconscious solidarity with his nervous men.

  ‘A necromancer?’ Felix asked, his voice lowered as though the word itself was a curse to even utter. ‘You told us this was about the nobility of death magic, not the work of some evil sorcerer.’

  The men echoed his complaint, their muffled protests breaking out into open grumbling. Draeder lifted his arms in response, waving at his soldiers in a gesture of re-assurance. The hard-edged lines of his face softened, as if to stress his own, more decent motives. But Felix sensed something else in that instant, a look in the young nobleman’s eyes that, while indeed more gentle, still betrayed a kind of arrogance. He looked for a moment as if he were about to speak to children, pitying them for their naïve folly and proud of his own superior wisdom.

  ‘My friends,’ he began. ‘You are wise to be concerned, of course. These are dangerous lands into which we venture, and I would never proceed if I did not have the greatest of faith in the determination and the strength of the men accompanying me.’

  ‘Admirable, young master,’ Erhard replied. ‘But such qualities will take us only so far in the face of a rogue of the kind you describe.’

  ‘You must permit me to finish, for while the mission upon which we act is fraught with peril, I can bring you the greatest of assurances from the Amethyst Order itself that the corrupt conjurer has long since perished. My colleagues in Altdorf are convinced he wasted away years ago, withered into nothing at the end of a vain and failed quest to achieve eternal life.’

  ‘That may be, but it does not change the fact that you have set us on a course in pursuit of an item that was once employed by an evil magician, to the foulest of purposes I can only imagine,’ Felix said.

  Draeder again looked at him with a condescending gaze.

  ‘My friend, do not fall into the trap of judging the object by the character of the man who wields it,’ he said. Then he pointed at the sword resting by Felix’s side. ‘Should your blade fall into the hands of an evil man, it would no doubt be put to evil ends. That would not render your sword an instrument to be loathed in, and of, itself.’

  Felix nodded, forced to admit that he agreed.

  ‘The book we seek is no different,’ Draeder continued. ‘It is true, it was stolen ages ago and set to foul purposes by a cruel and wicked man, but it need not be so. The wisdom it contains is just as capable of serving the Empire as harming it.’

  ‘I see the wisdom in that,’ Felix conceded.

  Erhard stepped up again, clearing his throat as if to draw all attention to himself.

  ‘That may all be the case,’ he said, signalling at least a vestige of incredulity. ‘But should my men be asked to ride out into the lands of a sinister villain, even one long dead, we must know precisely what it is we are about to face.’

  ‘Your men?’ Draeder replied. ‘These are servants of House von Halkern all, including yourself, as if I needed to remind you.’

  Erhard growled.

  ‘We entered this forest as servants of your father, it’s true. And we continued on at your behest for that reason, but the moment you purchased our further services with the promise of gold, you took us beyond the limits of our fealty,’ the old sergeant said. ‘Make no mistake, these boys may serve your house, but they serve with me. Servants to your noble name they are, but these men are like my own family. I will not see them ride off unaware of exactly what they face.’

  Draeder lowered his hands. He sighed as if exasperated, but seemed persuaded nonetheless. The
tone of his voice changed from that of a noble rallying his troops to a man merely telling a story.

  ‘The man’s name was Skethris, and he was a master of dark magic so powerful his like has rarely been seen beyond the tombs of distant Khemri,’ he said. ‘No one living today knows from whence he came or for how long he walked the earth, all we can say it that the rumours were many and varied.’

  ‘What do you know?’ Felix asked.

  ‘The best of the tales are sketchy and of questionable provenance, but I believe this much about him: he began as we are, a simple man, who set about searching for the secrets of this world. Only his path led him astray.

  ‘Some say he was a rogue magic user even then, a hedge wizard in the days before the founding of the Colleges of Magic. He pursued the study of the mystical winds in secret, travelling from city to city, following whispers and legends of secluded masters. He learned from them all, taking whatever elements they could offer and adding them to a growing repertoire of spells and incantations.

  ‘But always he sought more. More knowledge, more skill and more power. Eventually, he grew obsessed with seeking the one thing that no amount of fortune or facility can bring – more time. Thus did he embark on a quest to prolong his life, to continue learning and accumulating knowledge. It is possible he began with the best of intentions, we will never know now. But in the end, it corrupted him.’

  ‘How so?’ Felix asked.

  ‘Some say he ventured to the distant, sun-scorched Land of the Dead, to steal the secrets of the Tomb Kings, others that he murdered wizards in an attempt to take by force the secrets they refused to teach him. It was even reported that he sought out the tutelage of the living dead, a Vampire Lord himself, to reveal to him the mysteries of controlling death – and ultimately defying it.

  ‘Perhaps all of those legends are true, perhaps none. What we do know however, is that he extended his reach deep into the realms of shadow, and the foul things he drew forth prolonged his life for centuries, in the least.’

  ‘They say such men are driven mad by the darkness,’ Erhard said, a haunted look falling over even his eyes.