by David Guymer
Their souls fled and found Ne’Krul in their path.
Her knife drew an endless web of sigils though the sultry air of the murder pyres, capturing those lost flies one by one. Their terror at their damnation brought an edge to her smile, but she could not laugh. The long ritual had taken all of her strength. The energies she had taken from the murder of Kell and held in trust for this moment were gone. She was weak, as she had never been before, and would be until the moment that Baelziffar was able to fully manifest and complete the ritual from his side of the Ynfernael veil.
“They get too close,” she hissed to the warriors still around her.
A bulging prominence was forming in the Kellar line, a fist of purple and gold, sheathed in a gauntlet of yellowish light that seared Ne’Krul’s eyes to look upon.
Someone amongst the Suru’ithar was remarkably intent.
Turning from the gutted woman on the board beneath her, she addressed her guardians.
Two-score and four they were in number, the numeral of Baelziffar. Each was a battle-swollen obscenity and grotesque, her personal champions and protectors, secured in bondage of blood and demonic favor. Each one was the victor of a hundred battles and could themselves have been the warleader of a horde within her horde had their proclivities for carnage allowed them to share a field with others. Ne’Krul had never needed them before, but she had bought their allegiances, held their strength at its proper number, knowing she would need the protection of such warriors now.
“Go,” she said, stabbing a claw towards Kell’s flags where they struggled to stay afloat on the maelstrom. “And do not hesitate to kill them swiftly.”
The demon-made killers snuffled and growled as they left the Orrush Khatak, pushing through the lesser warriors that stood between them and battle. With their departure, Ne’Krul put the knights of Kellar from her mind.
They would not be a threat to her for much longer.
She smiled ghoulishly.
Dozens of additional warriors strode up to the fires, looking, as the ambitious always would, to fill the positions of honor that the departure of the coven guard to battle had left open to claim.
“Ne’Krul,” said one, in an accent that the Blood Sister could not place.
The warrior was exceptionally well built and muscular, with a bald head and skin painted entirely in conquered earth and blood. He bore no weapon, appearing to favor his two massive hands as his killing instruments. It spoke of conviction, and Ne’Krul admired that.
“What is it?” she said, the moment before the warrior’s fist broke her skull open.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Trenloe the Strong
Orrush Khatak, North Kell
The blood witch went down like a peg beaten into soft ground. She collapsed at his feet, her blood splattered over his knuckles. He shook them off as though they were tainted with something unwholesome.
“Easier than I expected.”
He looked around. The rest of the Hernfar survivors were falling on the witches that had been attending to Ne’Krul around the larger fire, staving in heads with rocks and bits of wood, or simply throttling them with their bare hands and drawing such satisfaction from the act that Trenloe was almost certain he saw the air under the great arch of stone thicken into the form of a mouth and wobble with laughter. An Uthuk blood warrior of inhuman proportions, an upright snake with vestigial limbs and sharp black teeth, fought off three men with sticks, but as yet the rest of the Uthuk Y’llan did not seem to have realized what was happening. Trenloe had not expected getting close to Ne’Krul to be this straightforward, but if the old fireside tales were anything to go by, then casual violence was hardly uncommon in an Uthuk war camp. Getting out again would no doubt be harder, but Trenloe was not planning that far ahead.
“My gods,” S’yarr breathed, coming up behind him and looking down.
Trenloe had been a soldier most of his life. He knew that there came a point where killing could be an act of mercy, and had heard men speak of it often when they had drunk enough to voice their fears for a coming battle. He had never given that kind of mercy himself, and had saved warriors who hours or days before had begged him for it. Now he would have done it without hesitation.
The woman on the torture rack begged him for it with her eyes.
Trenloe clenched and unclenched his hands, but he was not sure what he could do to finish her off that Ne’Krul had not already done.
“What is this?”
“Bloodwitchery,” S’yarr spat.
“What for?”
“I’m one quarter Uthuk. I’m not a witch.”
“Let’s untie her at least.”
The Darklander squatted down by the body. With clear reluctance, she felt beneath her. It was impossible even for the bravest to look on such agony and not feel weakened by it. Even a man who claimed to have no fear of death feared pain. How any monster that was capable of feeling pain itself could bear to inflict it on another was beyond Trenloe’s comprehension.
After a brief search, S’yarr re-emerged, her hand over her mouth.
“She’s not bound.”
Trenloe bent to lift her. The weight of the table fought to pull her down and even his strength would not move her. “She must be!”
Ne’Krul rose.
She lifted up off the ground without the use of her arms or her legs, yanked up by the scruff like a scarecrow fallen from its perch and set back aright. Her limbs were crooked, her nose smashed, her head bent back. There was a string of hideous snaps as her bones were brought back into socket.
Her head came last. She glared at him with liquid red eyes, licked blood flecks from black lips with a long pointed tongue and flexed talons that were jointed all wrong. A long drawn-out hiss played out through Trenloe’s mind, something frightening in a dark place. A sudden and inexplicable terror made his legs shake and his arms feel weak. His grip on the woman’s body slipped.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said in Dremmin’s voice.
Trenloe gasped.
“She’s a psychosis siren,” S’yarr yelled. “Her weapon is fear. Kill her and it will be gone.”
With a horrified yell, Trenloe threw a punch at the witch.
She became a blur of shadow, a dark shape whisked from his fist’s path like the hem of a duelist’s cloak. Ne’Krul whipped up a knife and lashed out. Trenloe blocked it with his forearm, delivered an uppercut that would have stunned a troll but only served to stagger the blood witch before she struck at him again. Trenloe was an expert brawler, a skill he had honed by being altogether too trusting when invited unarmed to parley, but the witch was strong, fast, jointed in no human way, and uncommonly skilled with a knife.
“Who are you?” she said using Bethan’s voice. The voice came from behind him with an itch of terror and it took all Trenloe had to not turn and assure himself that his fallen Companion was not there.
“You’re the first person I’ve met in Kell who doesn’t know?”
The witch’s lips stretched into a corpse’s grin.
Chuckles echoed around him.
“Have you come to defy me then, hero?” came Dame Ragthorn’s voice. “Do you think your strength enough? Was it enough at the ford?”
S’yarr yelled and thrust at the witch’s side with her hookspear. Ne’Krul bent aside. Her arm slid along the shaft while at the same time seeming to wrap around it and pull the weapon from the Darklander’s grip. The woman cursed as she stumbled back, casting about her for another weapon.
“Get out of here,” Trenloe told her.
The Darklander grimaced. “Being a hero now?”
“Gather up the others and run. I’ll not see more Companions dead in Kell.”
With a reluctant nod S’yarr backed away, then turned on her heels and sprinted the way they had come. Trenloe was relieved to see them go. I
f his time in Kell had taught him one thing it was that monsters like these were bigger than them.
“You fear me,” said Sergeant Marns. “And you fear death.”
“It’s a fool who’s never afraid,” said Trenloe.
“Mennara is full of fools.”
The witch struck so quickly Trenloe did not see her move. In fact, he would swear forever that she was still there in front of him as her knife slashed across his bicep. He clapped his hand to it and bellowed in pain, then beat his chest, leaving it with a bloody print, and roared. The witch flowed across him.
Suddenly, she was behind him.
“You disappoint me, Trenloe,” she said, her own paper-dry voice changing, taking on a rustic Trastan accent so broad that even the tenant of the next farm over would have struggled to pick out more than one word from the four. “You disappoint me.”
Trenloe scrunched his eyes and clawed at the sides of his bald head. “No!” He whirled, beating the air behind him with his bloodied arm. “Get out, witch!”
“You disappoint me. You didn’t save any of them. Not a one. Why didn’t you just stay at home?”
With a sob, Trenloe sank to his knees.
He had fought all over the southern baronies. He had faced down evil curses, liberated ancient treasures, fought hand-to-hand with wights who had bedeviled their old lands for hundreds of years, broken goblin raiders, human bandits and Loriman pirates and given most of what he had earned from it away. In that time, despite keeping his base in Artrast, he had returned home infrequently. Because there was one dread he had always harbored through it all and it gnawed at him.
That even now, somehow, standing alone against the ending of the world, it would not be enough.
“No!”
Five long claws closed over his forehead. A knife dug into his throat.
“Mennara is full of fools,” Ne’Krul breathed into his ear. “And all of them are afraid of something.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Fredric
Orrush Khatak, North Kell
The warrior was seven feet tall. His skin was marble. He did not die like other men. Fredric’s sword chipped at him five, six times, before the rune weapon found its mark and clove deep into the Uthuk barbarian’s skull. His stone skin cracked as Fredric wrenched the sword loose, lifted it partway high, too tired now to raise the weapon above his shoulder, and adjusted his seat on his horse to strike at the opposite side. The blade hacked into the Uthuk’s shoulder. Sand trickled from the wound. The warrior had a flail made of nine severed heads and looped it over his own head to strike. A Knight of the Yeron plunged his lance into his chest and trammeled his body under his hooves. Somewhere in the mayhem a horn sounded an order to rally. Fredric yelled for his warriors to attend. His horse whinnied, trampling over the small heap of bodies and winning him another few feet.
The charge was well and truly stalled. Like a punch into the body of an Ironbound. The battle line had broken into a hundred wedges. Each of them forced their own individual paths through the meat walls of Uthuk Y’llan towards the Gate. Several knights had been dragged to ignominious deaths, buried under a weight of bodies, hacked apart by barbarian glaives. None had yet pushed so far as Fredric and his own lance of knights, or checked so violently.
With a hoarse cry, he drove his sword into the face of a mountain of blubber. He pushed it as far in as the hilt. The obscene chuckled meatily, a new mouth splitting its face across the middle, and began to chew on the blade. It sounded like grinding stones. Fredric almost let go of the heirloom in weariness and horror.
These warriors just would not die.
“Push forwards,” Andira called. “Suffer no distractions.”
She whirled her poleaxe one-handed, bringing it crashing down between the two heads of a barbarian armored in bone, then turned to Fredric, open palm extended, the crossed-sword mark in the run flashing, and blasted the blubber mountain back into the hordes like a slug struck hard with a hammer.
Fredric nodded his thanks. Without Andira Runehand they would all have been dead already. He did not forget that. Even if it was clear to him, for he had seen how mighty she could be when pushed to it in her contest with Archerax, that she was holding something back.
He did not want to think that the demon king might be something even worse. He feared that if he did, then he would not have the courage to continue at her side.
Hearing again the horn blast, he echoed the hero’s urgings and turned in his saddle.
The view to the west lifted his heart.
Sudden exultation from the grip of despair put a fierce grin on his face.
Gold blazed under a crimson sky, followed thereafter by a sea of purple.
Lord-Commander Brant. The infantry had arrived at last.
Fredric watched the infantry battalions spread out to occupy the road, falling in good order out of marching files and forming up neatly into shield walls and lines. Archers assembled behind the rows of spears, and loosed a first volley that scythed through Uthuk warriors armored only in skins and ink. They prepared another. Golems with powerful siege bows bolted to their backs lumbered up to support them.
“The army is here!” Fredric yelled, and his warriors lifted his cry with their own.
With the full strength of Kell’s army now taking the field they could withdraw and regroup. The infantry would be the anvil against which Kell’s knights could hit the Uthuk Y’llan again and again until their strength broke. It was a textbook approach against a barbarian foe who favored overwhelming numbers and personal valor over battlefield tactics. It had served Fredric’s forefathers well in their border conflicts with the Ru. It would work again.
Andira spoke as though reading his thoughts.
“We cannot delay. Do not forget that we have engaged only the smallest fraction of the horde. Give the Swarm time to rouse and they will flank us from the hills and crush us.” With her poleaxe streaming banners she turned and pointed. “The Gate is before us. It is there. One more push and it is ours and we can end this, even though it may cost us all our lives.”
Fredric lifted his visor from his face. He sought out Sathe Caldergart who was busy dueling with an Uthuk warrior thing so willowy tall he was almost equal in height to the lance marshal on her warhorse. She found the space to nod between exchanges. Fredric’s face became stern. For some reason he found that he no longer cared about glory.
He was thinking of all the things that he and Grace had not yet seen and done, about how they never would. He wondered what she would be told of him when she grew up.
If she grew up.
He slammed his visor shut.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Trenloe the Strong
Orrush Khatak, North Kell
The most unexpected thoughts sprang through Trenloe’s mind. His father at his milking stool, bent from a hard day. Riding across Hernfar with Dremmin and Marns. The first time he had been taken to Artrast for market and seen the city. The taste of Ragthorn’s spiced bread. His small hand in his mother’s blonde hair. He could not hold onto them. They ran through his fingers like rainwater. He did not expect it to stop until the knife ran across his throat.
It stopped.
The blood witch released him, her knife scoring a deep descending line into the thick muscles of his neck as she arched back and shrieked. She stumbled, a spear point puncturing her narrow chest, sticky fluids leaking from the wound and down her belly.
S’yarr grinned fiercely. “Did you think I would leave you, Trenloe? After you pulled us, literally pulled us, through Kell to get here? Do you think any of us would leave if there was the slimmest chance that this witch might beat you?” She twisted the spear and pushed it down, a combined action not unlike that needed to draw a speared fish up onto a bank and pin it down for clubbing.
Trenloe dropped onto hands and knees, straightening
to rub at his cut neck, and grinned weakly back at the Darklander. She laughed, and an arrow shot through her mouth.
She gagged, pawing at the red-feathered shaft, and slowly fell.
Trenloe stared at her, his expression frozen in stunned disbelief.
Not again.
He could not let them all die again.
“You are a failure, Trenloe,” Ne’Krul hissed, dragging herself along the ground with the Darklander’s spear still half in her. Something that was too far away to be glimpsed and yet intimately near laughed at them both. “That is your great fear come true.” She flicked her talons this way and that, drawing the shadows thrown by the sacrificial pyres about her. “One by one they will fall and then you, last, knowing you have failed again.”
She dragged herself further back. The shadows broke.
The Uthuk Y’llan came pouring through them.
The first threw himself at Trenloe with a savage howl. Half his face was melted, and the other was frilled and spined like some horrific reptile. Trenloe dismissed him with a backhand so fierce it dislocated the warrior’s jaw and snapped his neck. As the warrior went limp to the ground, Trenloe took the next in line by the face, his huge hand swallowing it whole, and lifted her clear off the ground. The Uthuk woman kicked briefly, but could not match his reach, before Trenloe threw her back into the onrushing mob like a weighted net. The first two ranks went down under her. The third leapt over the second, and then Trenloe was amongst them.
Trenloe was a living war machine, a rune golem of flesh and blood, driven by fear. He wielded his fists like hammers capable of splitting stone, and every blow from them broke bones and sent bodies thumping to the ground. He was unstoppable, and yet every glimpse of the greater battle showed him his new Companions falling, overwhelmed by the sheer number of their foe or overpowered by warrior-obscenities three times their size. And so he snapped spear shafts, punched through bucklers, pulled clubs from clawed grips, forging his way like a frenzied bull to where Ne’Krul continued to draw herself back towards the red stone of the arch. Every step and blow redounded across the horizon of the archway and rang like thunder. As though the gods rose to their feet in applause. Bethan the Bard would have thrilled to witness it had she not fallen under a flesh ripper’s jaws. He roared, bestial, more Uthuk than Uthuk, as the acclaim of something from beyond the gate urged him to greater feats of slaughter in defiance of his fears.