Beyond the Bulwarks

by K. J. Coble

  Something bulged under the skin of his belly and he unleashed a long, trembling cry. A dot of blood formed, expanded until it drooled down white, rippling flesh. He coughed, gagged as gore bubbled out through his mouth. The bulge pushed up again and skin parted, blood frothing free as something pulsed between the lips of the wound.

  “Aeydon...” Anzo fought down nausea. “Forgive one who has forsaken you...”

  Flesh peeled back with a wet rip, like a soaked towel torn for bandages. Greaus’ back arched but he lacked the air for another scream, voice rattling in the back of his throat. A shape writhed loose from the wound, glistening with viscera and crimson as a tiny head twisted into the air. Fangs like needles gleamed in an outstretching mouth. An appendage flopped free, a stunted wing beating feebly against the quivering flesh of its unholy host.

  A pair of yellowy eyes popped open to spear Anzo with their hunger.

  “Fuck this!”

  Anzo sprang onto the stone table and stabbed the newborn abomination through the skull, let the blade sink through into Greaus’ belly. Tiny cries rippled from within. Anzo realized with horror that could have no words that other bulges were distending the abdomen, new wounds forming as tiny claws rent through for their first taste of life.

  Heathen rushed to Anzo’s side, scooping up Greaus’ axe. The broad-bladed weapon fell, carving a canyon from the dying chieftain’s belly. Together, they hacked, slashed, shrieked and cursed, shrieked as gore flew in fans to paint the walls, the ceiling, them. Reality blurred into red and flashing metal, Greaus’ heels hammering the table, and finally, finally stillness, when all was done but a mound of unholy ruin.

  His mind finally spinning back into his skull, Anzo turned numbly to see Durrim and his men gawking in speechless revulsion. A fleck of blood showed impossibly black where it had landed against Durrim’s pallid cheek.

  “So passes Greaus—” Anzo said hoarsely. Beside him, behind him—somewhere—Heathen spat on the body “—once the Lord of the Flinarr...”

  Chapter Seven

  Outcast’s Quest

  The column of the Hamrak and their Flinarr allies—prisoners—wound into the heart of the Bulwarks. The sky writhed as its gray sank near the peaks, lashing out curtains of rain that carried with them the chill of winter lurking just beyond autumn’s stormy façade. Mist wreathed mountain faces, breaks in it revealing sullen dark green beginning to speckle with the early riot of fall’s color. Ravines plunged into hazy depths. Silence like the emptiness before creation slipped in between distance grumbles of thunder.

  The going along twisted mountain trails had been hard, even on the travel-worn Hamrak, and Flinarr shed from the party at every stop. What hope the fools thought to find in the wilderness, Anzo could not guess, but the whimpers passing amongst ragged, hooded shadows spoke of despair and defeat so final even he doubted his plans.

  “What’s this?” Heathen rumbled at Anzo’s side as they trudged up another rise through bone-chilling dashes of rainfall stirred loose from the canopy.

  Ahead, at a rocky curve in the path, Durrim, Skarvus, and a knot of his retainers clustered as the column limped by. The prince of the Hamrak waved a finger to summon him.

  “It’ll be all right.” Anzo clapped the giant on the arm. “They let us keep our arms. That’s got to mean something, right?”

  Heathen rumbled without comfort and clenched Greaus’ axe closer. He’d had a chance at pickings of armor, too, but had only opted for a heavier cloak and a tunic baggy enough to almost fit his monstrous proportions.

  Varya’s small hand touched Anzo from the other side. “Be careful. We’ll be close.”

  Anzo flashed her a half-grin and strode ahead to join Durrim’s group. The prince didn’t immediately acknowledge him, though Skarvus shifted his sword belt around to bring the grip close to his hand. Durrim’s eyes remained on the passing column, tinged in melancholy.

  “Not exactly what you were hoping for?” Anzo asked, perhaps too harshly.

  The prince smoothed his mustache. “There might be a handful of warriors worth the weight of their skins. The rest—not exactly the pick of the slave-trade, though the extra labor will be welcome.” He shrugged. “My father will not be impressed. He’ll see it as more mouths to feed.”

  “You have victory,” Anzo said.

  “Some victory...” Skarvus began to grumble before bowing to Durrim.

  “It’s all right,” Durrim replied with a feeble wave. “You’re not wrong, old war dog. We have triumphed over a sorcery-ravaged corpse, here.”

  Silence dragged amongst the Hamrak, hard Vhurrian faces pinching in the rain and chill.

  “What is it you want of me, lord?” Anzo asked when he could stand it no longer.

  Durrim met his gaze. “I’m told you were Vyrm Kyn.”

  Anzo nodded and raised his right arm so that the Hamrak could look over his tattoo. Skarvus growled low in his throat. The others crowded close to see.

  “That means you fought Vhurr,” Durrim said, “and Aurid, especially at the end.”

  “That’s right.”

  Durrim crossed his arms before him. “You said before you could teach of us much of war. Was that the talk of desperation or does that mean you know the Aurid way of fighting?”

  Anzo stiffened with a touch of the parade-ground precision his father had once sought to drill into him, when he’d held out hope of making the son a proper Aurid. “It does.”

  The prince of the Hamrak nodded. “Good. We will need that. The old ways die. Orkall’s Courage is no longer enough in these times.” He elbowed Skarvus playfully to the old warrior’s grimacing. “As our world changes, we must have new ways, if we are to survive.” The jest faded and he fixed Anzo with an unyielding green stare. “That is the cause to which we are now pledged, the cause championed by Theregond of the Erevulans, the cause that my father will not hear.”

  “I am yours, Durrim,” Anzo said with a bow. “And I will do my best.”

  “We go now to Eyeloth at his hall in Cearigoth, high in the mountains.” A frown momentarily darkened Durrim’s countenance. “My home.” He shook the brooding aside. “I go again to call for his support. I have little hope, but I must try. You will stand with me.”

  “As you wish.” Anzo bowed again.

  Durrim nodded. “Get back to your woman and your giant. I will call upon you.”

  Anzo left the little party behind, chill, gray shadows growling in the haze. He didn’t have far to go along the column to find Varya and Heathen, the pair crouched together in the shelter of a rain-weighted maple. Varya rose at his approach.

  “It’s all right,” Anzo said as he joined them. “We go to Durrim’s father’s holdings.”

  “Eyeloth of the Hamrak was a mighty chieftain, once,” Heathen said. “If he joined in this alliance Durrim speaks of, it could make for a great host.”

  “I’d say that’s what he’s hoping for,” Anzo replied. “He doesn’t seem optimistic, though.” He glanced at Varya. The Initiate wobbled, seemed to be having difficulty standing, and Anzo reached out to take her arm. “How is it with you?”

  She shook off his grasp with a huff of impatience. “I hope you’re not proposing to carry me, too?” Her words brought a mischievous smile from Heathen. “I can carry on, just fine, thank you both.” The dark circles under her eyes belied the defiance in her voice. “I’m merely tired. I’m certainly no worse off than either of you.”

  Which was certainly the truth, Anzo conceded to himself with a grin. His left forearm itched under the bandages wound about it where Henna’s fangs had found purchase. And the stitches woven inexpertly into the gashes across the side of Heathen’s head glistened with dried puss. The wreck of his ear would never be fine to look upon, either. They were a battered ruin, the three of them.

  Varya’s face tightened with something that went beyond pain or fatigue. “What is it?” Anzo asked. “You’re thinking of the cave?”

  “Henna...” she whispered. “The harpy. It
should not have been there.”

  Dead yellow eyes stared out of the back of Anzo’s mind. He hid a shiver. “There have always been strange things in these mountains, Varya.”

  “Not like that,” she snapped. “It’s more, Anzo Severnus. Creatures like that haven’t walked this world since the Age of Dreams. We knew dark powers had awakened when we came here but...I fear what we are uncovering is more than magic or swords or alliances can face.”

  Anzo exchanged a look with Heathen. He forced the grin that had slipped back into place. “Look, we’ll take these things one at a time, all right?

  “You think you can just defeat a complex problem by attacking its elements in detail?” Varya snorted hopelessly. “You’re like an amateur at a game board who moves recklessly to reduce the pieces in play in order to simplify the tactics.”

  Anzo’s smile hardened with irritation. “Well, my lady, any man experienced with a sword will tell you that amateurs are sometimes the most dangerous opponents.”

  ***

  Another’s day of hiking brought the column out of the forest gloom onto a mountaintop unevenly cleared and speckled with patches of crops, wheat for the most part, scraggly and poorly tended. Small cries pierced the damp haze and shadows scurried at the sight of the newcomers, tools cast aside in panic, figures of women scooping up children, men abandoning a wagon, all of them dashing through the fine rain towards the bald peak.

  Caerigoth squatted atop the mountain behind a high dirt berm crowned with a sharpened-stake palisade. The sooty pall of cooking fires lingered above it and thatched roofs peeked over the wall, a higher structure darkening the heart of the settlement, a vaulted, wood-beamed hall that would be the lair of Eyeloth of the Hamrak. A horn blatted from the battlements as the farmers scrambled for the single gate. The throng of them splashed aside as a troop of half a dozen horsemen trotted forth.

  Durrim’s retinue broke off from the column and strode into the fields below Caerigoth, Anzo and Heathen among them, as the rest of the party, two thirds of Durrim’s company and the shivered mass of the Flinarr, waited at the edge of the woods. The war band’s bard—Thalien, Anzo had learned—put a horn to his lips and answered the call from the settlement.

  The riders shook themselves out into a single, thin line and cantered forward to meet them at a cautious pace, broad bucklers emblazoned with animal motifs held rigidly while free hands readied javelins and swords. Compared with the ease of the riders of the Secundus Kharzulius, Anzo judged these Vhurrs to be nobles who rode to battle, but fought on foot. One man in a mail corselet edged slightly ahead of the others.

  “Wait here,” Durrim said. Anzo and the others halted. The prince patted a clearly agitated Skarvus on the shoulder before striding forth to face the riders alone.

  “Come no further.” The lead rider called out. He trotted close and reined to halt. Rain beaded at the tips of a sagging mustache. A twitch shook it loose as the man regarded Durrim. “You are forbidden here. Why do you come?”

  “Am I not still the son of Eyeloth, Straedus?” Durrim replied with a prideful chin upraised.

  The rider called Straedus fingered the shaft of his javelin. “Some would now call you traitor.”

  “And you?”

  Anzo noted the other riders settling into a half-circle around the retinue, outnumbered but at the ready. Straedus glanced about at them in obvious discomfort. “I would call you unexpected.”

  Durrim grinned and Anzo noticed Skarvus’ almost inaudible sigh of easing nerves. “It’s been too long, friend,” Durrim said. “And it’s been too long since I saw my father. I would speak with him.”

  “He might not be of a mind to speak to you,” one of the other riders snapped, a scrawny man in faded leathers and a battered helm under which flowed a stringy mane of white-blonde.

  Growls rumbled in the throats of Durrim’s party. Skarvus squared his shoulders and loosened his sword belt. Anzo felt Heathen readying his axe as the wet air went smoky with tension.

  Straedus shot the outspoken rider a glare. “He might not, indeed. But that is not for us to say, is it?” That silenced the other man. Straedus turned worn features back to Durrim. “You may enter alone and without weapons.”

  Durrim snorted. “Have the manners of my father’s house staled so much that a warrior—a Hamrak!—is asked to leave behind his steel and his sword brothers?”

  Straedus squirmed in the saddle. The outspoken blonde looked ready to answer for him. But Straedus came to a decision first. “You may be heard, but I cannot allow you through the gate any other way, son of Eyeloth.”

  Durrim shrugged. “Then I will meet my father outside the gate.”

  Straedus nodded, relief in the motion, and turned to the others. “Back inside. Take word to our lord.” The riders broke off and rode back to the walls of Caerigoth. The horn blared again from the palisade.

  Durrim turned to his retinue. “Skarvus, Thalien—” his gaze shot towards Anzo “—and you two, come with me. The rest, wait.” The growls resumed but the prince waved them off with a fond though tense grin. “It must be this way, don’t you see, my loyal fools?” He spun on his heel and strode towards the gate, Skarvus and the bard falling in at his flanks.

  “I don’t think I like the way this is starting,” Heathen grumbled, loping forward to catch up.

  “Me neither.” Anzo glanced over his shoulder, spied Varya amongst the Flinarr, her hands folded together. He wasn’t certain but he thought he caught a sparkle of purple fire in her eyes.

  Straedus lingered behind the other riders, trotted at Durrim’s side for a moment. “You won’t like the way things are, my prince,” he said. “Things have gotten much worse since you left.” He heeled his mount and lurched on ahead. Durrim increased his pace, his escorts jogging to keep up.

  They reached the trampled ground below the gate and slowed to a halt. Straedus rode through, nearly snagged as the double log doors were drawn shut behind him. Looking up through rain that had intensified, Anzo regarded hooded and helmeted faces glaring down over sharpened stakes. Spear points and readied throwing axes flicked dull gray in uneasy fists. One or two archers readied bows.

  Heathen hefted his axe onto a massive shoulder and grinned at the onlookers, seemed to revel in the tension. Anzo got the feeling he’d almost be happier if things dissolved into a fight. “How long do you think they’ll keep us waiting?” the giant asked.

  Anzo noted a bunching of men at the ramparts above the gatehouse. “Not long, I’d say.”

  Hamrak parted to let through a tall, thin warrior in a battered, boar-crested helm to match Durrim’s. Waves of snowy white hair poured down across mail-draped shoulders and green eyes flashed out from a face drawn tightly against sharp bones.

  “Father,” Durrim called.

  “Now you come to me as son?” Eyeloth replied in a papery thin voice.

  “Though there is quarrel between us, father, I have always been yours.”

  Eyeloth leaned out over the ramparts, his whiskers twitching with an angry smile. “Or is it that the fire hall of Theregond no longer holds warmth for you?”

  Durrim grimaced but did not otherwise rise to the bait. “We come having just smashed the Flinarr to the west. I had hoped to join you in your hall and raise the chalice of victory together to Orkall and to the spoils of that victory.”

  Eyeloth’s laughter shivered in the rain. Anzo spied Straedus at his side now, and the blonde rider, as well. The King of the Hamraks smote the rampart in brittle humor and gestured towards the mass of Hamrak and Flinarr clustered at the forest’s edge. “Oh, I see what kind of booty you bring us. Did you drag them along to carry all the gold and jewels you liberated from old Greaus’ vast horde?” The sarcasm gave the king’s voice edge.

  “Greaus is dead.” Durrim raised a clenched fist. “We have been roaming and fighting and conquering, not cowering behind our walls, shivering in the dark, waiting for fate to come to us.”

  Growls and barks of outrage rippled along
the palisade. Behind Eyeloth, the blonde shouldered by Straedus to whisper at the king’s ear but the old man waved him away. “Think you to test your warriors against mine?”

  “That was not my intent in coming here,” Durrim shot back. “But I think it no small thing that the pick of your warriors came with me when I left.”

  Eyeloth’s mouth snapped open with a fresh retort but stilled. He straightened again and a calculating glimmer caught in his smile. “Yes. And tell me how much they have enjoyed the spoils of service to you, begging at scraps from Theregond’s table, raiding at refugees and dying tribes, shivering and starving in the rain?” The King turned his gaze to Durrim’s retinue, eyes settling for an instant on Anzo. “Perhaps they’d like another night in the rain, while the kin they left behind wait and suffer within my walls?”

  Skarvus and Thalien traded a glance. Durrim shifted on his feet, clearly pretending not to notice. A smile blossomed, hard and fierce. “Look at us, father. Is this how mother would have wanted—”

  “Leave your mother out of this!”

  “She made us swear—”

  “Speak not of her!”

  “—swear to her that we would stand together.” He spread his arms wide. “That’s all I want, but not just for you and I. I would have all of us, all Vhurrs, stand together. That’s what Theregond wants, not to swallow up our lands, but to stand together before it is too late!”

  Eyeloth seemed to sag, looked suddenly the old man he was. He shook his head. “It is madness. I told you before, boy. We are what we are.”

  “But we can be more. Please, father, you have seen the evil coming out of the east.”

  “Evil...” Eyeloth put his hands to the rampart. “Oh, yes, evil...we know much of it in these days. And we do not need to look east to find it. It is here, stalking our own halls.”