“Ah, right, I forgot that you’re chief among those determined to fall in combat,” said Heraldin, taking the turncoat noctomancer with a bannerman. “I wonder, my friend, what could drive you to want your own end? Is it for guilt? Or grief? Or do you wish to die for honor, as you Imperials are so prone to?”
The weaponsmaster’s eyes flashed with uncharacteristic emotion as they snapped up to look directly into Heraldin’s. It was practically a shout by Gaist’s standards.
“Easy, friend,” said the bard, holding his hands up. “I meant no disrespect. Merely a musing.”
Gaist stared at him for a moment, then turned back to the game. For a while they played in true silence, their faces as still as the evening air, their attacks and counters accelerating as the game intensified.
“You know,” Heraldin said as he took a knight. “I’m reminded of a Tinderkin legend that a tinker’s daughter once taught me.”
Gaist pulled back a bannerman without looking up.
“She said that when Arth was young and the gods still roamed it, Gnome ran in the forest with Deer and Boar and Wolf and all the other animals. Gnome hunted, and he fought, and he killed. He lived with no thought for any other. Just as Deer and Boar and Wolf did.” Heraldin feinted with his solamancer, then took the knight that Gaist sent after it.
Gaist’s brow furrowed.
“But Gnome roamed too far, hunted too much, killed too many. This displeased Fengelde, the Lady in the Wood, and she was no longer content to have him run among her beasts. So she sent Wolf and Dog to hunt Gnome and kill him.” Heraldin traded a bannerman for a knight.
“Wolf and Dog chased Gnome across all of Arth, and Gnome thought that he would die, for Wolf and Dog were mightier than he. But Erro, the Hearth Father, had pity. The god came to Gnome and gave him a mask, so that when Dog and Wolf caught Gnome, they didn’t recognize him.” Most of the pieces were gone now, and the action was centered around a corner of the board where Heraldin’s knight was dancing with Gaist’s noctomancer and king.
“Dog said, ‘We’ve come to kill a beast called Gnome,’” said Heraldin. “But Gnome pointed to his mask and replied ‘I am no beast. I am Man. I have morals, and nobility, and honor. It is much better than being a beast.’ And Dog believed Gnome, and so abandoned Fengelde and went with Gnome as his companion.”
Gaist narrowed his eyes at Heraldin as he pulled back his king.
“But Wolf was angry, and he told Dog, ‘Gnome has not changed; Man is only a mask on a beast. If you take his mask away, he will fight and kill as much as ever. I will not be shackled by his lies.’ And so Wolf ran back to Fengelde, to be free and run with the beasts forever.” Heraldin pressed in with his knight and a bannerman, forcing Gaist’s pieces against the edge of the board.
The weaponsmaster furrowed his brow and moved a distant knight toward the fray.
Heraldin pressed in. “People may play at morals or nobility or honor. They may believe in ‘the right thing’ so much that they’d even fight a liche to save a bunch of people they’ve never met. But in times of hardship or war or famine, times that are coming soon, the mask falls and all the honorable things slip away. They are not real. They are not worth giving your life for. Especially not when you would leave behind friends sorry to see you go.”
Gaist froze for a moment, his eyes locked on the board. Then slowly, purposefully, he advanced a knight.
It was a mistake. Heraldin swiftly captured the knight and pointed it at Gaist. “I’m stuck on this so-called quest, friend, a caged animal. With the guild and Benny Hookhand after my blood, I’ve no chance of making it on my own. But with a fighter like you… Well, should you ever drop the mask, you and I could run free again. Think on that.”
The bard advanced his last bannerman, pinning Gaist’s noctomancer and turning it to his side. Gaist’s king had no moves left. “I believe that’s a win for me,” he told the weaponsmaster, standing. “And I know enough to quit when I’m ahead. Have a good evening, my friend.”
With that, Heraldin headed back to the tents and left Gaist to pick up the pieces.
“I bet that hurt!” said Ignatius Wythelm, but he stared at the shrine’s eyes for another second before he allowed himself a laugh. These days, being a priest of the god of death wasn’t as much fun as it used to be.
It took an odd sort to serve in the priesthood of Mordo Ogg. The Lord of the End had few followers and no treasury. He rarely afforded his clergy power and bestowed few rewards on them for their devotion. And when a priest finally arrived at their own end, all of Mordo Ogg’s scant teachings were clear: there was no special treatment for his disciples.
Then again, the god of death demanded little of his followers, and people asked even less of them. And while the majority of people went all their lives ignoring most of the pantheon, all of them bowed to Mordo Ogg at least once.
Ignatius was odder than most of his brothers and sisters in service. Most of Mordo Ogg’s clergy were maudlin, spending their days moping around in white makeup and black robes while they recited tragic sonnets. But Ignatius considered himself a romantic, a lover of life—most specifically the last bit. He took immense pleasure from watching people the world over pass away, their departing souls momentarily lighting the eyes of the shrine of Mordo Ogg in Sculpin Down.
“There goes another!”
The shrine was little more than a single statue carved into an alcove in Andarun’s wall. It depicted a seated skeleton with steepled hands. Crimson light flashed intermittently in the skull’s sockets, and with every flicker the old priest’s gap-toothed grin grew.
“And another! Guess the herdsman finally bought the farm, eh? Ha ha! And—”
The old priest stopped short as the lights in the skull changed in nature, shifting in hue from crimson to a pale, sickly green that lingered even after the flare of light had faded. The worshippers of Mordo Ogg had few tenets, but they took what they had seriously. Their chief creed said that death was a journey all mortals must make, and it should be a one-way trip.
Ignatius knew all too well the blasphemy portended by a flash of viridescent light.
“No!” the priest howled, hurling himself against the statue’s dark eye sockets as though he could claw the light within them back into being. “You stay down! That isn’t right!”
The red light resumed flickering, as constant and passionless as ever.
“The master hates that,” he muttered, pulling himself back. He pulled his black robes around himself as though warding off a chill. “And there’s too much of it these days. It isn’t right for the dead to walk. It isn’t right.”
“It’s all sodding drake spit!” A sweep of Tyren Ur’Thos’ arm swept the clutter from his desk, including his tumbler of Dwarven whiskey. It made a sad chiming sound as it shattered.
Tyren stared at the glass shards and amber liquid pooled beneath them on the wooden floor. Part of him worried that the liquid would stain the floorboards, but then the sober part recalled that it didn’t matter. Nobody would care about the floor in the morning. The guardhouse likely wouldn’t be here by morning. With a shrug, Tyren poured himself another glass of Burnbristle’s gold-label, aged four hundred years.
He had taken the first drink to calm his nerves and steady his hands, but by now the alcohol had pushed him long past steadiness into fluid wobbling. Yet what the burning liquor took away in stability it gave back in confidence, and by time he had drained his latest glass, the letter seemed like a good idea again. He retrieved it from the pile of papers on the floor.
At first he thought his drink must have spilled on the page, as all the writing looked blurry and smudged, but then he decided that the rest of the room looked rather blurry and smudged as well. With a shrug, he folded the missive and fetched a red candle. Wax dribbled all over the parchment as he waved the candle with the exaggerated concentration of a drunk. It took him four tries to finally hit a crimson pool with his signet ring and seal the letter.
As he shook the letter to cool the wa
x, his eye caught the small, framed woodcut of three smiling figures sitting in a meadow in their best dress. In the hills behind them, the Ur’Thos family castle sat on Ruskan’s northern shore. The ancestral hold was usually cold and miserable, but for a few weeks each summer the snow melted, the flowers bloomed, and the hills came alive. Little Aubey had loved running in the coastal meadows.
Tyren’s younger self grinned back at him from the picture, blissfully unaware that the woman at his side would be running off with a bard from Parald the next winter, taking Aubey with her. Years later, Tyren was still alone, still miserable, and living under a de facto death sentence.
The impending doom was a recent development, and one that he blamed himself for. Tyren was familiar enough with Nove’s principles of universal irony to know that claiming a portion of the undead’s treasure was just begging for trouble. The universe would never allow Tyren such good fortune. Nor fate, nor the gods, nor, most pointedly, the elders of Vetchell. Elder Thisel had taken particular delight in assigning the knight-commander to defend Vetchell to the last.
Tyren took a deep breath and poured himself a final drink. “To the pit with Elder Thisel,” he said in a toast. “And with Nove, and with the whole thrice-cursed universe while we’re at it.”
Another thought struck him as he drained the glass. He made a couple of clumsy attempts to open the panel on the back of the picture. Failing that, he smashed the frame on his desk, slipped the woodcut into his belt pouch, and stood up.
Standing was a bad idea.
His office spun with such violence that he nearly fell to the floor. Between the liquor and the ceremonial armor, Tyren couldn’t manage much beyond an exaggerated stagger. He fell against the door, took a few deep breaths, and threw it open.
“Knight-Commander!” Captains and sergeants charged Tyren the moment he emerged from his office. “Knight-Commander Ur’Thos, the undead are at the southern gate!”
“The bloody corpses are scaling the walls!”
“Skeletal archers are letting loose—”
“—Reported several casualties—”
“—Wards over the east wall!”
Tyren raised a hand to silence the assembled officers, but doing so threw him off-balance. It was all he could do to catch himself by leaning against the wall at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Fellows, I appreciate your troubles, but I regret to inform you that I am resigning effective immediately,” he said to the floor, waving the letter in the general direction of the closest subordinates.
“What?” demanded Captain Bothwick.
“I am resigning effective—”
“We heard what you said,” said Captain Ingrim. “But it cannot be so, sir. You can’t abandon the men now, when they need you most.”
“Well, I can’t see how they need me,” said Tyren. “I can’t save their lives, and they’ll surely manage to die without my help.”
“But we’re to be the town’s rearguard,” protested Sergeant Ur’Rastan.
“We’re here to mount a facade of a defense so the citizens’ insurance policies don’t get voided,” snarled Tyren. “If the town has no defenders, all of these houses are abandoned property. Some token soldiers have to be sacrificed. I don’t intend to be among them.”
“Give up your hopeless cynicism, man!” snapped Captain Bothwick. “We’re buying the evacuees time to flee!”
“Maybe you are,” said Tyren. “I’m here because I submitted the quest!”
The assembled officers looked aghast. “Do you care nothing for the people of our city?” demanded one of them. The fat one. Tyren couldn’t think of his name.
“They got a… a good head start.” Tyren walked his hands up the wall to right himself. Magda and Aubey left eleven years ago. The rest of them had, what, four days? Good enough.
“What you’re proposing, Knight-Commander, is dereliction of duty,” growled Captain Ingrim.
“I can’t have any duty, because I’m a deserter,” said Tyren, throwing the letter at the captain’s feet. Slowly, trying to disguise his unsteady gait as a purposeful stride, Tyren pushed past the gathered officers and out the door.
“So that’s it,” Bothwick said. “We’re all to die here, abandoned by our commanding officer?”
“You might be, but I’m headed north.” Tyren pointed down the road in front of him.
“Should we arrest him, sirs?” asked Sergeant Ur’Rastan.
“No,” said Captain Ingrim, wearing a strange smile. “No, leave him. He’ll get his soon enough.”
Tyren staggered on his way as fast as his legs would carry him. His progress was slow, as the street kept spinning when he moved, and nothing looked like it was in the right place. He staggered down side streets and got sidetracked in alleys as he searched for some familiar signs, but everything seemed off. Worse, the sounds of fighting were intensifying around him.
When Tyren stumbled around a corner and saw the wall, his stomach fell. Soldiers were crowded up against Vetchell’s massive gate, and many more lined the ramparts. Specters clashed against magical wards that the mages had left over the city. The way the enchanted barriers shimmered and shook with every ghostly assault led Tyren to believe the magic wouldn’t hold much longer.
“You there!” he shouted, stumbling up to a soldier at the rear of the mob. “Have the undead made it this far north?”
“North?” said the startled soldier. “I suppose so, yes, Lordship. They arrived at the gates this morning.”
“And are you all deserters?” asked Tyren.
“Not at all, Knight-Commander!” said the soldier. He looked to be a lieutenant by the stripes above his heraldry, a middle-aged man by the gray in his hair and paunch sticking out from beneath his breastplate. “Not while I’ve a sword on my belt and a spear in my hand!”
“But then…” Two of Tyren’s neurons finally swam close enough to make the connection. “Oh, thrice curse the gods’ bones! This is the southern gate!”
“Of course, your lordship!” said the lieutenant. “The last stand of Vetchell!”
It occurred to Tyren that there was a fatal flaw in his plan: by the time he had imbibed enough courage to brazenly desert, he was too drunk to navigate to safety. He shook his head. “I can’t be… I mean I’ve got to… I need to…” The knight-commander found it hard to form a sentence with a pickled brain and a strange piping in his ears. “Got to… do you hear something?”
“Battles are generally a noisy affair, sir,” said the lieutenant. “Screams, clanging weapons, and… what is that?”
Amid the roar of battle, Tyren could make out warbling music, growing in volume and intensity.
“Is that music?” asked the lieutenant. The other soldiers looked around in bewilderment as stream of short, sharp notes overwhelmed the battle, punctuated by a longer, deeper swell of music.
At the bottom of his depths, Tyren wanted to run. Unfortunately, the rest of his depths were already running about eighty proof. Now that he had lost his momentum he doubted he could take more than a few steps without toppling over.
“It’s one of them Gnomish organs,” shouted another man at the barricade.
“Stop talkin’ nonsense,” the lieutenant hollered back. “Of course it ain’t a Gnomish organ!”
A siege engine of some sort or another hit the wall, sending a cloud of stone dust into the air. Chips of masonry and ashes rained down on the resolute guards below. Sheets of paper fluttered over the wall like pale leaves among the fog. Tyren snatched one from the air and read with bleary eyes.
The page was a flyer, like the ones the General Store used to sell adventuring gear. A single skull woodcut decorated the top, and beneath it a bold message was printed in equally bold lettering of various sizes.
Tremble, Mortal!
DREAD LORD
DETARR UR’MAYAN,
KING of the DEAD,
comes for your soul!
ETERNAL TORMENT AWAITS.
Tyren looked up from the
page to see if anyone else had seen the odd advertisement. He noticed a couple of soldiers exchanging nervous glances as they read. Most of the guards were standing resolute to the last. And two of them, inexplicably, were still locked in debate.
“No, I’m certain of it, Ted!” the soldier insisted. “Listen to those staccato notes! The fugues! It’s one of those Imperial toccata pieces. And Imperial toccatas were traditionally written to be played on Gnomish organs.”
“Don’t you lecture me on Imperial toccatas, Neddard Biggins!” snapped the lieutenant. “This ain’t about music theory! It’s about supply lines and efficiency!”
“This isn’t really the time…” Tyren stumbled back from the gate. Whatever the instrument, the music was getting louder, and rushing toward an imposing crescendo.
“I mean, even a small Gnomish organ has got to weigh over three hundred stone, and if you shake it too hard the insides will get busted,” Lieutenant Ted continued. “Who wants to haul that alongside an army? And then you’d need your regular maintenance to keep the pipes clean and the leather bits from fraying. Not to mention keeping it in tune. The logistics would be a nightmare!”
“I can’t say anything about logistics, but I know a Gnomish organ playing an Imperial toccata when I hear one!” Neddard yelled back.
“Burn it, Neddard!” shouted Ted. “Why would anyone haul an extremely heavy yet very fragile instrument hundreds of miles just to play it at the dramatic climax of a siege?”
The lieutenant likely would have continued arguing, but the soldiers’ debate—and their lives—were cut short by the dramatic climax of the siege. Specifically, the part where the gates of Vetchell were blown from their hinges in a great explosion of shrapnel and surprised guards.
“It’s called setting the atmosphere, you troglodytes!” roared a robed figure emerging from smoke and dust. He towered above the stricken guards, in part because he was tall but mostly because he levitated a foot off the ground. A skull burned with violet flames where his head should have been, and he wore a crown wrought from iron spikes. Behind him, ranks of leering corpses shambled into the city.
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