by Matthew Ward
They spilled past the flanks of the shadowthorn lines and rushed downhill.
As the first dizzying motes of pollen tantalised Viktor’s senses, he glimpsed thornmaidens amid the horde. They capered and pirouetted about their misshapen brothers, bright petals curling and falling from their hair as the seasonless magics of Fellhallow yielded to the Wintertide of the wider world. And behind them all, vast lurching four-legged shapes with high, briared shoulders and low snouts, crowned with tangled horns and stubbled, mossy hides. Thornbeasts – something else Viktor had once thought only fable.
At the line’s western extent, pavissionaires deployed as a skirmish screen stumbled away from the oncoming mass, only to be overtaken by thorns. On their flank, the Thrakkian advance stuttered, riders slumping in their saddles as thornmaidens’ intoxicating pollen did its wicked work. The sweep of a kraikon’s sword snatched a half-dozen strawjacks to splinters, then the giant fell, borne backwards by a score of others. Brilliant daylight scattered beneath sullen clouds.
Sidara grabbed at her saddle’s horn for balance. “Uncle?”
The foremost of the three assault lines vanished beneath the tide of strawjacks.
Paralysed not by windblown poison, but the disbelief of waking nightmare, Viktor scarcely registered the awed, horrified murmurs from the reserve at his back, or the screams echoing on the Ice Wind. It couldn’t be! After Govanna, the gods had foresworn involvement in ephemeral war. Or so Josiri had said. But Josiri had been wrong before. Ephemeral or divine, he was ever too ready to believe heartfelt tale.
Shields buckled beneath a thornbeast’s impact, bodies scattering behind. The second assault line halted, rippling back as its soldiers beheld the unfolding horror to their fore. The hillside gleamed bronze as simarka crashed into the mass of strawjacks, the kraikons scattered across the battlefield converging on the point where Izack’s banner had vanished. Scrape of metal and thorn vied with screams, daylight flaring as forest-demons pried metal apart and freed captive light.
Breathing as one in the throes of exertion, Sidara turned stricken gaze on Viktor. “There are too many. I can’t—” She gritted her teeth. Her halo glowed bright enough to itch at Viktor’s skin. On the hillside, light danced about bronze shoulders and sculpted manes. “Viktor!”
Jarred from nightmare as much by Sidara’s tone as his shadow’s discomfort at her halo, Viktor glanced behind at forces yet held in reserve. Curse Essamere and their faithlessness. And Sartorov for seceding. What remained was scarcely their match. Drazina knights, mounted and foot, drilled and loyal but woefully inexperienced. Commander Tallar’s lightly armed wayfarer auxiliaries. Conscripts of the 2nd, 8th and 16th, whom he’d only ever intended to offer sight and smell of the enemy, for they were the greenest in the army. Numbers fit to cow a humbled Rhaled, but to face the divine?
But what else was there, save retreat and thus abandonment of those who’d followed their Lord Protector to the field? Besides, he had his shadow, and a Lady of Light rode at his side. Jack was not the only divinity come to Argatha Bridge. Heirs of Malatriant and Lumestra were present also.
Let the Lord of Fellhallow intrude. Let him face the man who could not lose, and be humbled for it.
“Commander Tallar?” Viktor spread his shadow wide and let the words ripple within, cheating the unnatural wind. “Sound the advance!”
Buccinas flared, the murmurs lost beneath the shouts of officers and sergeants. Breath steaming in the cold, Viktor unslung his claymore. The weight of it hastened rising confidence. Not for him the general’s place behind the lines, while others fought in his name. Nor at the head of a council’s table, burdened with petty governance. For three decades, his home had been the battlefield. It called him now.
As Drazina formed up around, Viktor spurred closer to Sidara, his voice too low to carry. “Stay close to me. I promised Josiri I’d bring you home safe. I would not be a liar in this.”
Cheeks taut, she unslung her shield from her shoulders, and drew her sword. “I’m not afraid.”
Of course she was. To be otherwise was to be a fool. But fear was the wellspring of courage. For all the concerns Viktor bore for the soldiers at his back, he carried none for the daughter of Lilyana and Malachi Reveque.
He swept the claymore high, the exhilaration of coming battle abuzz in his veins and his shadow howling its delight. “Death and honour!”
“Death and honour!”
Fifty-Three
Melanna wept, never knowing if elation or loss urged tears forth, salvation’s joy dashed against unyielding despair.
Song and battle cry had long departed the Hadari ranks. Shields were grounded. Spears at rest. Death they had pledged and death there was, though none was borne or dealt by Rhaled’s children. Forgotten by the very battle they’d come to fight, they watched, awestruck, as the assault line buckled, Thrakkian axe and Tressian halberd counting little against Fellhallow unleashed. Lunassera fell to their knees, offering unspoken prayer to their distant goddess. Unblooded warriors gaped while veterans adopted the distant stare of men lost in old battles.
“Goddess guard me,” breathed Chakdra. “What miracle is this?”
“Jack fought the Tressians at Govanna,” rumbled Jorcari. “Perhaps he holds a grudge?”
How Melanna wished to believe that. How she wished she could silence the small, horrified voice that screamed at her for a fool. The bargain had been struck. The price would follow. All she’d wished for. All she’d feared.
The Thrakkians on the western flank were already in full retreat, streaming downhill, a tideline of black-garbed dead at their back and strawjacks lumbering behind. A lone thornmaiden, the flowers of her briared hair falling as withered petals, had strayed from the pursuit. Clutching a corpse to her breast, she turned a courtly waltz atop the dead, each strut and whirl set to the rhythm of screams.
To the east and in the centre, the Tressians fought on, the second and third lines embattled as Fellhallow’s host overwhelmed the first. The howls of the dying vied with the crunch and snap of briar. Roots dragging the wounded down through the churned snow until their mouths filled with mud and their struggles were lost from sight.
“It’s not a grudge,” said Melanna, the words spoken without conscious intent. “Fellhallow now stands as the guarantor of Rhaled’s throne, and the throne of Empire.”
She broke off, her throat thick. A lunassera shot her a poisonous glance. Chakdra regarded her without comprehension. How far had her words carried? What whispers would they birth in coming days?
“What are your orders, my Empress?” said Jorcari. “Your warriors stand ready. Do we go forward?”
She shook her head, sickened by a hillside already thick with dead. More corpses to haunt her dreams. That they were Tressians seemed no longer to matter. More bodies to prop up her throne. Their deaths bought Rhaled’s survival, and the lives of those who’d followed their Empress to Argatha Bridge. But the thought of expending even a single Rhalesh life to speed Jack’s victory filled her throat with bile.
“No,” she said, the words heavy as her heart. “Our part here is ended.”
As she turned to leave, light and shadow swept the hillside.
Viktor’s claymore struck the strawjack’s ivy-clad torso in a spray of dying leaves. Ice-crusted branches woven in imitation of musculature shattered to fragments, laying bare a ribcage of mouldered bone. Livid green eyes blazed one last time in the jagged mask of the creature’s face, and then its wreckage was lost behind the Drazina’s thundering hooves.
Cheers rang out as men and women found faltering courage in the knowledge that the forest-demons could be slain. The third line surged uphill to rescue the second. Viktor forged on, Sidara radiant at his side, her longsword smeared with ichor and daylight mantled about her shoulders. With them came the riders of the reserve, Drazina with lances lowered and wayfarers with sabres slashing.
The second line was all but hidden beneath a writhing, clawing mass of branches. The first could
not be seen. But there was no time for doubt, nor to conjure Izack’s fate. Viktor gave himself to tremor of hooves and his shadow’s wild joy.
He swept on into the billowing pollen-clouds, the air unbreathable. Senses swimming, Viktor set loose his shadow. Frost crackled along the claymore’s blade. Strawjacks turned turgid, writhing fronds slowing as chill bit deep. Steel hacked down through a misshapen shoulder, scattering bone and briar. Halberds came forward to settle the rest, sergeants’ cries restoring order to a line embattled.
A knot of Drazina galloped past to Viktor’s left and paid for valour with death, snatched from their steeds by strawjacks’ gangling arms. The last died in a thornmaiden’s embrace, idiot grin fixed in place even after briars tore out his throat. Viktor’s claymore took the thornmaiden’s head before the corpse stopped twitching, her last utterance a spill of excited laughter.
“Rally!” Viktor stood tall in his stirrups, sword aloft. “Reform the line!”
Survivors of the third line joined the second, bolstered again by the infantry of the reserve. As a new shield wall arose amid the bloody wreckage, Viktor cast about for Sidara.
A blaze of daylight revealed her to the east, a shrinking band of Drazina about her. Uphill, where Viktor at last glimpsed Izack’s banner, a lone kraikon shuddered and toppled sideways beneath a thornbeast’s charge, light hissing from rents in its armour. Sidara cried out and slid from her saddle, the horse bolting from beneath her.
Crackling triumph, strawjacks crowded in.
“Yah!”
Leaving the reforming line to Tallar’s care, Viktor spurred across the hillside. Others rode with him. Drazina. Conscripts rescued from the rout. The claymore bit deep and pulled free through shards of frost-speckled brambles. An axe sheared away a strawjack’s head, and thudded into the mud as whipping fronds dragged its master from his saddle.
Viktor slipped from his saddle before his horse stopped, claymore hacking a strawjack’s legs away. A Drazina’s sweeping blade split the creature’s head. Awash in pollen, Viktor shouldered the thrashing wreckage clear and knelt beside Sidara.
“I told you to remain close.”
Shield discarded, she pushed herself upright on trembling arms.
“Your promise is not mine,” she breathed. “I’m fine.”
Viktor didn’t waste breath gainsaying the lie. Sidara’s gaunt face spoke to the reflected toll of her destroyed charges. She put a piece of her light – her self – within the constructs to grant them purpose. What became of that sliver of soul when the host fell dark? Viktor didn’t know – he’d never asked – and the weight of that ignorance lay heavier than ever.
He stood, hand hooked beneath her shoulder to help her rise, and beheld disaster.
The momentum of his charge had fizzled almost to nothing. Tallar’s line, in the process of reforming at last sight, shuffled downhill as a fresh strawjack onslaught broke across its shields. The rear ranks were an open wound, King’s Blue uniforms bleeding away south to the safety of the bridge. The west flank was a charnel of bodies and swaying thorns, the east full of galloping horses and panicked cries. And everywhere, the broken, mangled hulks of simarka and kraikons, as mournful in their way as the flesh and blood masters they’d failed.
An army fit to end the threat of Rhaled for generations, lost to slaughter and rout in less than an hour. Defeat came for the man who could not lose, and mocked his ambition.
Sidara swayed, her face more haggard than ever. “It’s done, Viktor.”
Furious, he rounded on her, uncaring that a score of wavering Drazina witnessed his fury. “No! Not while we’ve strength to fight!” He cast a hand northwards to Izack’s banner, where crackling forest-demons made butchery of the first line’s survivors. “Would you have me abandon Izack?”
“No!” She spat the word and followed it tiredly. “There’s nothing more we can do.”
“There’s always something more!” he roared. “Find your strength! We cannot let this pass!”
Heart seething, Viktor closed his eyes and stretched his shadow across the hillside as he’d once done at Govanna. A twitch. A tug. The dead rose. Tressians. Thrakkians. One corpse after another, crawling from the carnage to oppose the foe. Black spots danced behind his eyes, the pressure worsening with every cadaver that clawed its way upright. He fell to his knees, and gripped the dead tight. They couldn’t fight. He didn’t need them to. They needed only to give the strawjacks pause, and give hope to those who fought on.
Thus had he won the field at Govanna. Thus would he win again.
Viktor’s will clamped about them like a fist, the dead stood tall.
Snarling satisfaction, he opened his eyes.
The strawjacks came on, ignoring the dead, lurching ever onwards to foes with blood yet to spill. The outermost edge of Viktor’s band vanished beneath seething fronds. To the west, Tallar’s banners fell as the shield wall dissolved into a mass of fleeing, doomed souls.
“No!”
Brow streaming with cold sweat, he gripped the dead tighter, striving by will alone to instil spark of life and thus deliver salvation. But for all his striving, the dead defied him as they ever had. He sank to one knee, and then the other. His shadow writhed and raged. The darkness behind his eyes flowed forth and smothered sight.
The last thing he heard was Sidara’s scream.
The thornbeast shouldered a pavissionaire aside and stomped down on Izack’s chest, driving him into the mud. His breastplate, already scored and crumpled from the impact of the creature’s gnarled, cervine horns, buckled. Air shuddered from tortured lungs. Ribs snapped. Izack scrabbled for a sword flung beyond reach when the demon had knocked him flying.
The thornbeast reared up. Izack abandoned his attempt for the sword and slid his dagger from its sheath as the creature stomped down. Driven as much by the demon’s strength as Izack’s own, the honed steel parted the tangled branches between its toes. Again the thornbeast reared. Its hooting, crackling cry rippled with pain. Strawjacks crunched beneath thrashing feet.
Ignoring the red hot stab of broken ribs, Izack rolled clear of the beast’s flailing horns and snatched up his sword.
“Come on then, you ugly bastard!”
The thornbeast lumbered to the charge, scattering sightless, stumbling corpses before it.
A woman’s scream split the air. Not fear, nor panic, but loss and rage. Rage above all. Izack just about registered the voice as Sidara’s when a sucking, howling wind lit the sky to flame.
A hot wind brushed Izack’s exposed skin, not searing but warming, caressing. A summer’s day beneath bleak clouds. Golden rays woke the thornbeast’s briared flesh to flame, and flame to stinging soot. Light faded. The false wind died and the true regained mastery, bearing the crackling, alien screams of strawjacks away south.
His throat thick with ash, Izack cuffed at streaming eyes and stared north along a scorched, arrow-straight path perhaps two-hundred paces wide. At a forest of wizened and blackened strawjacks, reduced to charred statues, golden embers sparkling and fires burning upon the scrub. Beyond them, beyond Tressians caught within the forest but miraculously untouched by the flames, the hillside fell deathly still. Shadowthorns frozen in the act of withdrawal or fallen to their knees, mouths agape. Forest-demons stood motionless to either side of the blackened pathway, alien emotion unreadable as the wind tugged at frond and briar.
But it was the view a half mile to the south, where scorched ground yielded to melting snows and muddy green, that stole what little breath Izack’s ravaged lungs sifted from the bitter, ashen air. A vast, spread-winged bird-shape reached towards the clouds, its pinions ablaze with golden, leaping flame. Sidara was a dark figure at its heart, arms upraised.
“Raven’s Eyes,” breathed Izack.
The light flickered as Sidara fell to her knees, the firebird dissipated by the wind. The battlefield breathed deep.
Tearing his gaze from Sidara, Izack beheld the hillside anew. Hundreds of strawjacks snatched to oblivion
by the golden flames, but many times more remained upon the crest. Of his own, Izack marked precious few. A dozen here. A score there. Bands of men and women clinging to tattered banners atop the dead. Thousands strained and squalled to make passage of the bridge below, but the hillside – the battle – had been lost long ago. Sidara’s miracle offered no victory. It only staved off disaster.
Too like Govanna, for his liking. Mortals caught between the divine.
“Fall back to the bridge!” Ash clogged Izack’s cry. He hawked to clear it. “Fall back!”
Soldiers streamed down the hill through scattered fires, faces as awestruck and soot-blackened as he knew his own to be, bearing their wounded and leaving the dead behind. Izack went with them, thoughts as numb as his limbs and eyes always on a motionless foe, wary for the pursuit that would tear them all to ruin.
That pursuit still hadn’t come by the time Izack reached the blackened tidemark where a filthy Sidara knelt beside a motionless Lord Droshna.
“A phoenix shall blaze,” she muttered, the words singsong. “A phoenix shall…”
“B-bloody did.” Izack cursed himself for his stutter. But how could one not be wary of someone capable of… all this? “You did good, lass.”
She stared blankly, golden eyes fading blue, looking but not seeing. The young woman he remembered, but something else also. Something he’d never understand. Something to be respected. Maybe even feared. He glanced back uphill. No maybe about it.
Deciding – hoping – that Sidara would keep, Izack turned his attention on Lord Droshna. “He still among the living?”